


Advanced Adaptation for Clones New to Earth: Holiday Edition

by goodoldfashioned



Series: Clone Verse [3]
Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bathing/Washing, Bickering, Christmas Fluff, Clones, Clubbing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Financial Issues, Fireplaces, First Time, Holidays, Hot Springs & Onsen, House Cleaning, Huddling For Warmth, Insecurity, M/M, Moving, Multiple Partners, Nightmares, POV Multiple, Partner sharing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Negotiation, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Shower Sex, Tent Sex, Threesome - M/M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:53:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 50,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: As the weather in Milwaukee gets colder the Jay and Mike clones begin to more thoroughly navigate the real world and their feelings for each other, culminating in a minor Christmas miracle.
Relationships: Mike Clones/Jay Clones, Mike/Jay, Mike/Jay's Clones
Series: Clone Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719904
Comments: 25
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe that this got so long, except that of course I can.
> 
> This was really fun to write! I love thinking about this verse and all their different configurations and tensions. The first chapter is a kind of prequel to the epilogue of the last installment, showing how nerd Mike and chubby Jay first got together, and then it proceeds from there with a new POV in each chapter. Also chubby Jay's chapter is longer than the other clones' chapters because he has a lot of feelings :>
> 
> Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write more about these guys, I had a blast doing it and it really put me in the holiday spirit during a weird year!! MERRY CLONE-MAS <3

He knows what they all call him, though they’re careful not to say it to his face: fat Jay, chubby Jay, sad sack Jay, emo Jay, and probably others he hasn’t yet overheard when they think he’s not around or listening. He’d prefer dork Jay, which would correspond with nerd Mike, who is steadily becoming his favorite person in the apartment, but no one ever asked him what he wants to be called. 

He’s cautioned himself not to get too attached to nerd Mike, since hot Jay is right there and has stopped going out on dates with random men since his ordeal with the old man who drugged him. This hiatus from venturing out of the apartment, maybe permanent, means hot Jay will be looking for companionship among the apartment-dwellers soon, and shrimp Jay has already claimed stud Mike in his singularly tenacious way. 

Since there’s no way nerd Mike will pick the chubby, over-emotional, buck-toothed Jay over the cocky hot one in the long run, he tries to keep nerd Mike at arm’s length as much as possible, which isn’t easy. Nerd Mike is clingy almost on the level of shrimp Jay, always hovering and offering to help with things, like he thinks he’s being a good citizen by keeping the resident sad sack company. He’s clearly intimidated by hot Jay, at least for now, so he settles for the chubby one who’s nice to him. Jay isn’t dumb, and he’s not going to be anybody’s doormat. He sighs at nerd Mike’s attentions but tolerates them. It’s not like he’s got anything better to do. 

The first time nerd Mike tries to kiss him is when they’re rewatching “Galaxy’s Child” together, a couple of nights after watching it during the usual TNG evening viewing with the rest of the Mikes and Jays. Revisiting the episodes they watch with the group in the days that follow is their shared habit. Jay likes rewatching things to really absorb all the details, and nerd Mike, who was created with a Star Trek wiki built into his brain, likes seeing if Jay notices everything and quizzing him afterward. 

“What are you doing?” Jay asks when nerd Mike has leaned over to breathe on his cheek, his lips brushing over the stubble that Jay needs to shave, though he still hasn’t decided if he looks better or worse without the facial hair that hot Jay wears perfectly. 

“What?” Nerd Mike rears away, red-faced, and adjusts his glasses. “Uh, nothing. Sorry.”

He leans back onto the stack of pillows they’re sharing and stares grimly at the laptop, which is resting on Jay’s belly. They’re stretched out together in the ‘sex bed,’ which is also the bed where hot Jay, shrimp Jay and stud Mike sleep together. There’s no real reason to call it the sex bed, since those three are the only ones who also have sex on it, but like so many other stupid names, it has stuck. Shrimp Jay seems okay with sharing stud Mike, but hot Jay will get bored eventually and want his own Mike, and only the original Jay ever had a chance of competing with that feral shrimp energy when the attention of a Mike was at stake. With stud Mike thereby claimed for good and big Mike unshakably in love with the original Jay, that leaves nerd Mike, who probably just doesn’t realize he could have hot Jay if he wanted, and that he doesn’t have to settle for the one he’s currently lying next to in bed.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Jay asks when nerd Mike won’t stop breathing too hard, having burning red cheeks, or glancing over at him while fidgeting. 

“I was trying to kiss you,” Mike says, as if Jay couldn’t tell. “But. Am I like Geordi?”

“Are you-- Like Geordi?”

“In this episode. With the unwanted affection and shit.”

Jay frowns at the laptop, watching Dr. Brahms dressing Geordi down for concealing his obsession with her holodeck recordings and therefore having a crush on her. 

“We could just be friends,” nerd Mike says, still so close that Jay can smell the Maruchan Chicken Flavor Ramen they made together for lunch on his breath. “But, uh.” He fidgets and adjusts his glasses again. His face is so hot that the lenses are fogging up a little. “I dunno, I-- Thought, maybe. But maybe you still want the big Mike?”

“No,” Jay says, annoyed by that presumption.

“Oh. Then you just. You don’t want to kiss me?”

Jay opens his mouth to respond, feeling his own face getting hotter. He loves kissing. He’s thought about doing it with nerd Mike, but that seems like the very definition of getting too attached, considering how attached he got to original Mike after doing it with him, before he noticed the way that Mike looks at the original Jay. 

“I’m just trying to play it smart this time,” Jay says. 

“Smart?” 

Jay pauses the episode and groans, wishing he didn’t have to talk about his feelings, ever. They all act like he’s such an emotional baby, but they’re the ones who are always cornering him and forcing him to confront how he feels. 

“Yeah, you know-- Look, if you want to be with the hot Jay, you should. Don’t be afraid of him. He talks a big game, but he’s--”

“What about me trying to kiss you makes you think I want him?”

Jay just stares at him, like: really? You’re going to make me explain it?

“You’re just practicing with me,” he says, more bitterly than he intended to. “Or, that’s what you want to do, anyway. Or what you’ll figure out you want, eventually.”

Now nerd Mike looks pissed, which is unfortunately kind of hot. 

“You’d know better than me, huh?” he says.

Jay sniffs. They haven’t really fought before, unless their awkward introduction to each other counts, and even then shrimp Jay was the one who was at nerd Mike’s throat.

“Let me walk you through this,” Jay says, hearing how condescending he’s being but unable to stop, because he’s pre-hurt and feeling attacked at the same time. “If you can pick between the Jays, which you can, there’s no reason you’d pick the one who looks like me when you can have the one who looks like him, so why would I just assume I’ll be able to keep you once he decides he wants you, too? He’s traumatized, he’s not going back to the bars for a long time. He’ll want his own Mike.”

“And I should just feel grateful for that, as the only Mike left? The shitty one?” 

“What-- No!”

Mike huffs and looks at Jay like he’s the asshole here, which hurts, probably because it’s deserved. He knows he’s being-- Whatever. But nerd Mike doesn’t know what it’s like to be rejected. 

Except that Jay just kind of did reject him, now that he thinks about it.

“Why are you acting like all the Jays are the same?” Mike asks. “Why would you of all people have that attitude? Hot Jay only ever wants to talk about himself. It’s pretty ironic that he says the rest of us are boring, because he’s the boringest Jay by far. Shrimp Jay is a shrill sex maniac who gets on my nerves. The original has a stick up his ass about everything and treats me like I’m a dumb kid. You’re the interesting one. You’re the one I like.” 

Jay stares, trying to determine the validity of this. He also has the impulse to defend his brethren Jays, because while hot Jay can be boring he’s not some dummy, and he’s the funniest one of the Jays. Shrimp Jay is enthusiastic, not shrill. Original Jay just wants to protect everyone, and he didn’t ask for any of this. Also, there isn’t a person in this apartment, clone or original, who isn’t a sex maniac. 

“But I guess you’re just making excuses, anyway,” Mike says, scooting away. “Because you’re still hung up on big Mike.”

“No!” Jay catches Mike’s arm and holds him in place, glowering. “That’s not true.”

“Fine, then you just don’t like me that way. Message received, Dr. Brahms!”

“Don’t call me that. You’re being an idiot.”

“You’re hurting my arm!”

Jay only yanks on it harder in response, surprised at himself. He barely knows what he’s doing as he shoves nerd Mike down onto the bed, onto his back. Nerd Mike looks furious for a blink, then all objections clear from his eyes and he’s staring up at Jay with a kind of shocked wonder, breathing hard underneath him. Without meaning to, Jay has straddled his chest and is holding him down by the shoulders, feeling suddenly possessive. 

This Mike does not walk away without his permission.

“Don’t act like you know my mind better than I do,” Jay says, pressing more of his weight down onto Mike’s shoulders. 

Mike snorts. “That’s funny--”

“I know what you’re going to say, that I just did the same thing to you. But-- Listen. If you fuck with me, you’d better know what you’re getting into.”

“Fuck with you, huh,” Mike says, rolling his hips up. 

“I’m serious!” Now Jay is getting hard, which is unfortunate, because Mike will feel it at the center of his chest, where Jay’s crotch is currently resting. He should get up, let go, but he doesn’t want to.

“I know you’re serious,” Mike says. He reaches up to hold Jay’s wrists, pinning his hands in place like he knows Jay was thinking about letting go. “That’s why I like you. You’re not like those other nitwits.”

“Don’t call them nitwits.”

“And I’m not like big Mike. He’s kind of a thoughtless asshole. I mean, that’s the whole reason I exist. I’m the serious Mike, and you’re the serious Jay. Also, I think you’re hotter than the supposedly hot one anyway, so.”

“Oh, fuck you! Don’t insult my intelligence.” 

“You don’t think I find you hot?” 

Mike waggles his eyebrows, his mouth twitching into a semi-evil grin as he lifts his hips again, this time pressing the bulge of his dick to Jay’s ass.

Jay gasps. Mike is hard, too. Harder than Jay is, even. Kind of shockingly hard.

“Then explain that,” Mike says, and he flips Jay onto his back so fast that he loses his breath.

They wrestle across the bed for a while, laughing and blushing. Whenever Jay gets the upper hand, he’s pretty sure it’s because Mike is letting him have it. Mike is bigger and stronger than him, and Jay can feel it when they tussle. The sensation of knowing he can be overpowered and that the person who might do so is going easy on him probably shouldn’t make his dick leak into his boxers, and when Mike finally pins him, presses his hands to the bed under his palms and leans down to kiss him on the mouth, Jay probably shouldn’t gasp like he didn’t see it coming, but he does, because somehow he didn’t. 

Kissing this Mike is different. Jay can feel his glasses slipping down against the bridge of his nose, for one, and while the original Mike kissed like he was taking charge, nerd Mike only has that attitude in flashes before pulling back to check Jay’s face. Jay stares up at him, breathing hard and trying to make his eyes say: yes, good, more. Mike pushes his glasses back with one finger and dives down to kiss him again.

“So what have you done?” Mike asks, whispering after they’ve kissed and rubbed against each other a little, both behaving more cluelessly than they actually need to. “I mean, like. With the other one.”

“I don’t want to talk about the others.”

“Yeah, but. You haven’t, uh. Done much, have you?”

Jay scrunches up his nose and flexes underneath him. So they all talk about it, how he’s the only one who lives here who hasn’t ‘done much.’ 

“I haven’t been fucked by anybody, if that’s what you mean,” Jay says. “Do you think you’re going to fuck me now? Because I let you kiss me?”

“No-- Jesus, I don’t know! I just, uhh. What do you like?”

Jay shrugs one shoulder, not willing to make this easy for him. He likes giving blow jobs, and getting eaten out, and being touched and kissed and held, generally. He’s wanted to try that other thing that they’ve all done, the one he hasn’t. But not with just anybody, and not yet.

“Do you even like me?” nerd Mike asks, looking distressed.

Jay snickers at that phrasing, then has to grab Mike and pull him back down when he scoffs and tries to move away, trying to show Jay how easily he can be hurt, or something. 

“I like you,” Jay says, holding Mike’s face close to his. “Don’t be dumb.”

“You’re mean,” Mike says, but then he kisses Jay again, deeply, like he approves.

They roll around a little while kissing, like a lazy sort of resumption of the wrestling they were doing. Jay hooks his leg around the backs of Mike’s thighs when Mike is on top, and starts making desperate noises that he can’t contain when he uses the traction to rub the bulge of his dick against Mike’s, starting to chafe and wondering if he should take himself out, or maybe take Mike out and suck him, and oh, god, actually-- He really wants to.

He’s up on his elbows and kissing Mike hard, trying to come up with a suave way to ask to suck his cock, when the bedroom door opens and shrimp Jay pops in like he owns the place, bolting for the desk on the other side of the room.

“Get out!” Jay shouts, because it’s his job to yell at the Jays when they’re assholes, and nerd Mike’s job to do the same for stud Mike and the original, neither of whom tolerate criticism as well as any of the more level-headed Jays. 

“Sorry!” shrimp Jay says, rifling through clutter on the desk without looking at them. “I left my phone in here, I think, I can’t find it--” 

“We get the room until five!” nerd Mike says, and Jay loves how livid he looks, still spread on top of Jay and pinning him to the bed, letting him hide his dick between them, though it’s really no big deal to him if any Jay sees him in this state. 

“I’m not trying to take the room! Fuck.” Shrimp Jay turns toward the bed with a frown and crosses his skinny arms over his chest. “Maybe it’s on the bed. Can you check the sheets?”

“If you left it in here, then you’ve relinquished it to us until five o’clock,” Jay says, so hard under the crush of Mike’s body that he’s afraid he might come even while having this argument. “This is our territory, all present inventory included.”

“Why do you have to talk like that?” shrimp Jay asks, scowling. “This isn’t Star Trek. I just want my phone!”

“Did you find it?” stud Mike asks, appearing in the doorway.

“Does he sound like he did?” nerd Mike says, sitting up to show everyone his tented jeans. “Get out, both of you!”

“Jay!” Jay shouts, feeling weird as ever for calling out his own name when asking for one of the others. They usually know which one he means based on context, and if any of them sounds like they want to tattle on the others they’re always asking for the original Jay, which is the case here. “These two are in here breaking the rules!”

“He went to the store with big Mike,” stud Mike says.

“And we’re not afraid of him, anyway,” shrimp Jay says. “The rules are established by committee, not by the originals.”

“Oh my god,” hot Jay calls from the living room. “Are you two seriously still in there? Leave them alone.”

“Just let me look under the pillows,” shrimp Jay says, headed in that direction. “I bet that’s where I left it.”

“Here, you little shit,” Jay says, crawling up toward the pillows and feeling stupid about his obvious erection. “Look,” he says, flinging all the pillows onto the floor. “No fucking phone. Now--”

“Check between the mattress and the headboard,” shrimp Jay says, pointing.

“We were having a fucking moment!” nerd Mike says, so loudly that shrimp Jay jumps back like a startled cat. “Fuck your phone and get the fuck out!”

“Calm down!” stud Mike shouts. “You two are always having a moment, so what?”

“I hate all of you,” Jay says, embarrassed and unwilling to comment on that. “Except you,” he says, turning back to look at nerd Mike from over his shoulder. “Come with me.”

Nerd Mike hurries to obey in a way that pleases Jay greatly. He follows Jay into the bathroom, and when they’re closed up there together Mike falls onto Jay to kiss him again, pressing against him so greedily that Jay laughs into his mouth. 

“I thought of something,” Jay says when Mike lets him take a breath. 

“What’s that?”

“We could take a shower together. If you want.”

“Oh-- Okay, yeah. But, uh. I have to take my glasses off in the shower or they fog up.”

“So?”

“Soo, I won’t be able to see you.”

“That makes it more exciting,” Jay says, instead of yeah no kidding, that’s the idea. He’ll be calmer about this if Mike’s vision of him is a little blurred. “I’ll turn the water on. Lock the door so those assholes won’t barge in.”

Jay turns the shower on, making the water warm enough to steam, and when he turns back Mike has pulled his t-shirt off. Just the sight of his naked chest makes Jay’s thighs clench together. Mike grins like he noticed this before taking his glasses off and setting them on the counter beside the sink. 

“Am I the only one getting undressed?” Mike asks, unbuttoning his jeans. 

“No,” Jay says, and he flushes as he pulls off his shirt, reminding himself that he probably just looks like a pale blob to Mike right now, which is pretty accurate to the crystal clear vision of him, too. 

“You’ll have to help me get in,” Mike says, shoving his jeans down. He’s hard inside his boxers and blushing, the pink on his cheeks moving down onto his throat. 

“Okay.” 

Jay shoves his boxers down with his jeans, takes his socks off as gracefully as possible and abruptly finds himself naked. Then so is Mike, and Jay only lets himself gape for a few seconds, his dick growing fully hard again for the sight of Mike’s bare, lanky body. He reaches for Mike’s hand and pulls him closer. They both laugh when Mike stumbles over his discarded jeans a little and swoons in for a clumsy kiss, meeting Jay’s cheek and then the corner of his lips before pressing his tongue into Jay’s mouth. He’s getting better at kissing, Jay thinks, opening wide for it. 

“I’m gonna blow you,” Jay says, whispering this against Mike’s lips. “If you want?”

“Oh my god, yes, please--”

“Okay, here. Can you see the rim of the tub, at least?”

Jay helps him step over it, and it feels good to be closed behind the heavy fabric shower curtain together when he’s pulled it shut around the tub. This was Jay’s sanctuary when they first arrived on Earth, the one place where he could be alone and feel sorry for himself, because he’d had a crush on big Mike since their rescue aboard the ship and was sure he’d never get so much as a taste of him, let alone what he really wanted, which was to win his heart over the other Jays, to be the one he picked and wanted most.

Now he can’t deny that he wants this Mike most: the nerdy, gangly one who’s blinking at him half blindly and squinting through the steam that puffs between their faces while they stand under the hot water together, touching each other tentatively and laughing in shaky exhales, nervous. Jay is rock hard again now, aching to be touched, and he echoes Mike’s moan when they shuffle close enough that their dicks brush together. Mike is taller and they don’t line up perfectly, but when Jay comes up onto his toes to press against him it’s so good, just right. He’d be nervous about slipping on the floor of the tub if Mike wasn’t holding him steady with his giant hands.

“Fuck,” Jay says, grabbing Mike’s biceps for additional traction. He groans and stares down at the thick shaft of Mike’s cock slipping and rubbing against his own. “You’re so big,” he says, helpless for how good it feels. 

Mike snorts and squeezes Jay’s waist where he’s holding him tight, keeping him close. 

“You’re familiar with this dick,” he says. “I think.” 

“Well-- No, yeah, I know, uh. The dimensions, from the original, but. Jesus, just. I guess I forgot.”

Mike laughs and buries his face in Jay’s hair, moaning. 

“You’re so little,” he says.

“It’s not little,” Jay says, pressing his dick against the base of Mike’s, his legs shaking from the effort of this upright humping. “It’s, ah, you’re just big--”

“I don’t mean your dick!” Mike says, and he laughs so hard that Jay is almost mad at him. “I mean you, just. All of you.”

Mike kisses Jay high on his forehead, near his spiky fringe. Jay wants to be huffy about this comment on his size, but Mike is looking at him too sweetly, with the kind of overcome fondness that Jay has wanted aimed at him for so long. He’s never loved being the ‘biggest’ of the Jays and doesn’t mind being called little. He likes that Mike makes him feel this way: safe, small, attractively bite-sized.

“Can I clean your dick before I suck it?” Jay asks, feeling stupid but unable to hold this in. It’s a fantasy he has: washing someone, taking care of them, methodically cleaning his partner to suit his standards. 

“It’s not dirty,” Mike says, laughing again. “But sure. Knock yourself out. I, uh. I might come if you rub too much, though. So. Beware.”

Jay snickers at that and leans up onto his toes to kiss Mike on the mouth. He moans when Mike’s arms wrap around him and lets Mike pull him even closer, fitting their wet bodies together under the spray of the shower. It’s so good, having Mike’s arms around him and knowing that Mike doesn’t want to let him get far. Feeling wanted like this is instantly addictive. If anything goes wrong from here, he’s already so screwed.

“How long have you wanted to kiss me?” Jay asks when he pulls back to grab the soap. 

“Mhm, since the night we all went to that old man’s house to save hot Jay.” 

It still stings to hear the other clone referred to as ‘hot,’ but it’s essentially his name and it’s not going anywhere. 

“Why that night?” Jay asks. He uncaps the original Jay’s fancy body wash, which they’re not supposed to use. This is a special occasion, and the cheap bar of soap just won’t do. “Was it because that was the first night we sorta, uh. Cuddled?”

“No,” Mike says, smirking. “But I liked that, too. It was the way you took care of hot Jay when he was all shaken up. You were so, like. Sweet, and good. Not like the others. I mean, they’re not bad or anything, but they’re not like you. You’re the sweetheart Jay. That’s how I think of you, anyway.”

“Hmph,” Jay says, not sure how he feels about that. It’s pretty close to ‘emo, sad sack Jay,’ he thinks, but he’s flushed with a developing feeling of security and tenderness anyway, because nerd Mike is the sweet Mike, too. Jay knows what he means.

“Oh god,” Mike says, the low rumble of his voice doing something to Jay just as much as finally stroking Mike’s huge cock with his soapy hand is doing something to him. They’re both staring down at Jay’s hand as it moves along the shaft, both breathing hard. Jay touches Mike only gently, not wanting to set him off before he can get this big dick in his mouth. He’s missed it. Even though the only cock he’s actually sucked belongs to the original Mike, it’s this same one, in terms of how it feels and looks, which is fucking perfect, as far as Jay is concerned. He wants to know how it tastes: the same, different, better?

“There,” Jay says, rubbing his thumb into the slit a little, which makes Mike curl his shoulders forward and whimper. “All clean, um. Can I do your balls?”

“You can do whatever the fuck you want, shortcake.”

“Ew, don’t call me that,” Jay says, but he’s also laughing, charmed.

Mike groans and spreads his legs on the shower floor when Jay rolls his balls in his palm, giving them a good scrubbing. Jay is so hot for this that he feels like his nipples are throbbing. His dick certainly is, and he hisses when he touches himself just softly with the heel of his hand, not ready to go off yet. 

“Fuck, I’m not gonna last long,” Mike says, and Jay takes that as his cue to stop soaping. He turns Mike toward the water and glues himself to Mike’s back as he rinses him off, letting Mike slump against him. 

“You’re so hot,” Jay says, dragging his palms over Mike’s heaving chest. 

“Sure you don’t prefer the meatier version?” Mike asks. He’s trying to be a smart ass, but when he turns to smirk at Jay there seems to be some real insecurity in the question, and it touches Jay deeply, knowing Mike worries about how much he’s wanted or not, too. 

“You’re the best Mike,” Jay says, sinking to his knees and keeping his gaze locked on Mike’s face all the way down, so he’ll see how true this is. “You can fuck my mouth,” he says, his lips bumping against Mike’s cockhead when he’s in position. “And pull my hair.” He flicks his tongue out along Mike’s slit and smiles at the sound of Mike’s powerful groan, which everyone in the household will hear. “I want you to feel like a king,” he says, settling his hands on Mike’s thighs.

“You get off on that?” Mike says, his voice rough with want. “Worshipping cock?”

“Yeah,” Jay says, almost shy for admitting it, his cheeks burning. “Watch.”

He’s shameless about sucking Mike in, giddy for the chance to have this big dick all to himself at last, no shrimpy hands trying to shove him away. He moans for the weight of it on his tongue, echoing Mike’s moan from overhead. It’s a little too soap-flavored, but the cleanliness of him makes the moment sweeter, too, and so does Mike’s hand petting through his hair, and the soft whining sounds he makes when Jay shows him how deep he can take him in. 

“Fuck, I’m--” Mike says, then he whines again, thighs shaking hard in Jay’s grip. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna--” 

“It’s okay,” Jay says when he’s pulled off to stare up at him, panting. “You can--”

“It’s just-- I’ve never had this--” Mike looks distressed, like he thinks this is the only blow job Jay will ever give him and he’s spoiled it by getting too aroused too fast. 

“The other Jay didn’t--?”

“No, he just, uh. He did other stuff, not this. Fuck, Jay, it feels so good.” 

Jay beams at the sound of his name just like that, no qualifiers attached. Mike said it like he’s the only Jay in the world. 

He puts his mouth around Mike’s cockhead and feels him start to come as he takes him in deeper, working his throat down as far as he can and swallowing the first spurts, then all the rest. There’s no one here to fight him for Mike’s come, which admittedly is just bitter and salty like the other Mike’s, but it’s all his, he earned it, and he licks the head clean as he pulls off. 

“God,” Mike says, yanking him up and crushing him into a hug that makes Jay laugh a little, because Mike is all shaky and breathing in huffs, emotional-seeming. “Jesus, fuck, thank you,” he says, squeezing Jay in against his chest. “Your mouth, I can’t-- I can’t even believe that just happened.”

Jay starts to say, please, you were totally expecting us to hook up, but he withholds it and pets Mike’s back instead, remembering to be sweet for him. 

“I loved it, too,” Jay says, feeling newly meek but also so hard that he’s ready to beg for some attention on his dick. 

“C’mere, you,” Mike mutters, grabbing a handful of Jay’s wet hair and using his grip to tilt Jay’s face up toward his for a dirty kiss. “I’ve never done it before,” he says when he pulls back, whispering like he’s embarrassed.

“What-- Sucking dick?”

Mike snorts and nods. 

“Hmm.” Jay fidgets against him and chews his lip a little. “I wonder if you wouldn’t do, um. This other thing, actually.”

“Fucking?”

“No! God.” Jay can’t even imagine how awkward it would be to have your first time while standing in the shower. “It’s, umm. Kinda embarrassing, but. I love it, and I’ve only ever had it once. And the shower’s sort of the perfect place to do it.”

“Yeah?”

Someone tries the bathroom door knob, and Jay snarls in that direction like an animal whose territory has been threatened. It’s hard enough to work up the nerve to ask Mike to lick his asshole without having company standing out there tapping their foot and waiting for the toilet. 

“Hey!” There’s knocking. It’s hot Jay, of course. “No hogging the bathroom. You two can use the master bedroom, the originals are still at the store.”

“We’re in the shower!” Jay calls out. “Go away!”

“No, man, I need to take a leak! I gave you fifteen minutes. That’s the upper limit! We all agreed.”

“There’s no fucking way we’ve been in here for fifteen minutes!”

“Maybe we could move to the bed,” nerd Mike says, whispering. “Unless-- Does this thing you want _need_ to be in the shower?”

“I need to fucking come, is what I need,” Jay says, annoyed with Mike for going along with hot Jay’s suggestion and submitting to his rules-pull. Of course, of course. “Just-- Whatever, you don’t have to do anything, I’ll jerk off so we can get out.”

“No-- Hey, we can, just--”

Jay steps back, keeping Mike at arm’s length with his hand open on Mike’s chest. His other hand is on his dick, working efficiently in a way that brings to mind the miserable first week on Earth, when getting rid of erections was a perfunctory, nonstop chore. He feels nowhere close to coming, though he’s still so hard it hurts. 

“Get on your knees,” Jay says. Hot Jay is still knocking on the door, his empathy for their moment apparently evaporated. “I’ll come on your face.”

“You-- Oh.” Mike blinks at him hazily and looks confused. “That’s why it’s got to to be in the shower? That’s-- What you like?”

“Uh-huh,” Jay says, still artlessly jacking himself and holding Mike back. He’s not going to explain about the mechanics of ass eating right now, or how tender and strange and special it felt when the other Mike did it to him. “Hurry, he’s driving me crazy.”

“You-- We could--” Mike swallows the rest of his protest and nods, lowering to his knees. “Um. Okay.”

“Hello!” hot Jay shouts. “I’m going to piss my pants out here, this is stupid! You two can do whatever you’re doing anywhere else in the house--”

“Shut up!” Jay shouts back, furiously enough that Mike flinches. “Ungh, I’m-- Almost done!” 

This feels worryingly untrue, but he grits his teeth and wills himself to get there, staring down at Mike’s confused, upturned face. 

“Fine,” hot Jay says, killing the paltry momentum that he’d managed to build up. “You’ve got sixty seconds!”

Jay moans at the back of his throat and closes his eyes, stripping his hand over his dick. Mike huffs like he’s offended.

“I could put that in my mouth, you know,” he says. 

Jay whines and suddenly can’t remember why he was mad or think of a single reason not to agree to just that. He nods and shuffles forward, whimpering when Mike gives him a single, teasing lick. Mike looks a little annoyed now, too, but no less willing to suck Jay’s dick. 

“It’s, just--” Jay says, panting. “He’s-- It’s so-- They’re everywhere--”

“Shh,” Mike says, giving Jay a wicked look from beneath his thick eyelashes. “Nobody’s in here but you and me.” 

Jay lets out his breath in a slow exhale and places his hand gently on top of Mike’s head. He hopes it feels like an apology for overreacting, despairing, whatever. Mike’s hot mouth closing around his dick is enough to get him right back up against his edge as he takes it in deeper, until he’s swallowed Jay down to the root.

“Oh fuck,” Jay whispers, struggling to keep his hips from bucking as his fingers close in Mike’s hair. “Th, that’s-- Yeah, please--”

Mike reaches up to squeeze Jay’s thighs while bobbing his head on his dick, eyes closed like he’s enjoying this, and that’s all it takes to get Jay back to panting, shaking, and finally coming with a long moan. It feels so good, after so much frustration, that he doesn’t give a shit if hot Jay has a full on tantrum and kicks down the door. All that matters is Mike is swallowing his come and stroking his thighs with his thumbs, coaxing every drop of this good feeling out like he knows it almost hurts to just let go and enjoy it.

“That was my first ever time doing that,” Mike says when he’s pulled off, as if they hadn’t already established this. He’s still on his knees, looking up at Jay with a goofy, almost painfully adorable grin. “Seems like I might have set a record,” he says, rising to his feet.

“A record?” Jay says, still breathless.

“For closing the deal, so to speak.” 

Jay leans up onto his toes, winds his arms around Mike’s neck and kisses him. Hot Jay is still hammering on the door, but it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore, because Mike’s big hands are on his waist, and his mouth is hot and slick, tinged with the taste of Jay’s come, which is enough to make his still-softening dick twitch against Mike’s thigh.

“We should let him in,” Mike says when he pulls back. “You know what it’s like when you need to piss and someone’s holed up in here taking here forever.”

Jay rolls his eyes at Mike’s concern for hot Jay’s bladder, but releases him and turns off the shower. He doesn’t remind Mike that hot Jay is a drama queen about everything, especially territory disputes, just climbs out of the tub on jelly legs and grabs the cleanest-looking towel for himself. 

“Jesus christ!” hot Jay says when they relinquish the bathroom, towels around their waists and clothes hugged to their chests as they make their way out into the hallway. Hot Jay darts inside like he’s on fire but also makes time to turn and glare at them as he shuts the door. “This will not be forgotten,” he says, as if they’ve betrayed him deeply, then he slams the door shut and locks it. 

Jay follows nerd Mike back into the sex bedroom, where shrimp Jay is now stretched across the bed on his belly, reading something from his phone to stud Mike, who’s lying beside him and seeming to only half pay attention while he strokes the pale skin at the small of shrimp Jay’s back, his fat fingers inching toward the waistband of shrimp Jay’s sweatpants like he has plans. 

“Can we not even get dressed in peace?” Jay mutters, though he knows the answer is no, there’s no peace for any of them, and he’s the only one who seems to be bothered by it. Nerd Mike is naked and toweling off like he doesn’t mind being seen, even when shrimp Jay looks up to blatantly check him out. 

“Originals are back,” shrimp Jay says, still staring at nerd Mike’s freshly sucked dick when they hear the key turning in the apartment’s front door. 

“Go help them with the groceries,” Jay says. 

“Don’t tell me what to do.” 

Jay barely bites back the urge to shout: quit staring at my boyfriend’s cock! It’s not like nerd Mike belongs to him now. So they blew each other once. So nerd Mike thinks he’s a sweetheart, so what.

Dressed, he goes out to see what the originals have brought home from the store. He’s guilty of looking forward to meals too much, maybe, but food is one of the few variables in his otherwise pretty boring life. Nerd Mike follows him, keeping close as usual and giving him the same wistful looks he’s been getting for weeks now, even after what happened in the shower. 

“Check it out!” original Jay says, beaming as he pulls a mini pumpkin from one of the shopping bags. “It’s officially my favorite time of year.” 

“It becomes official when pumpkins enter the house,” big Mike says. He’s at the fridge, unloading beers.

“It becomes official on September first,” original Jay says, somewhat snottily. He’s pulling more small pumpkins from the same bag and arranging them on the table. “But the pumpkins help with atmosphere.” 

“Did you get fish sticks?” shrimp Jay asks, coming into the kitchen with stud Mike on his heels.

“Yes, I got everybody’s disgusting junk food,” Jay says. He pulls a box of frozen fish sticks from a bag and displays them for shrimp Jay, who grabs them and clutches them like they’re the love of his life. For chubby Jay there’s a family size bag of Funyuns. 

“Goody,” he says when the original Jay passes him the bag. Having now embarked on a something-or-other with nerd Mike that involves kissing, he regrets requesting the stinky things. They each get to pick one junk food item per shopping trip. Jay otherwise makes them eat healthy. Nerd Mike’s pick was frosted brownies from the Pick n Save bakery. 

“I’d just like to remind everyone,” hot Jay says when he enters the kitchen, still looking enraged, “That we have rules about bathroom occupancy for a fucking reason. I know some of you are willing to piss in the kitchen sink like animals--”

“Wait, what?” original Jay says, boggling at stud Mike as if he’s the likely culprit. 

“I’ve never done that,” stud Mike says, but he looks guilty. “But if I did, it would only be because I was on the verge of death from-- Uhh. Piss toxicity, because someone was being an asshole about hogging the bathroom.” 

“I told you we should just take the lock off the door,” big Mike says.

“Right, so they can all barge in on _us_ whenever they want?” Original Jay huffs and goes over to the sink to stare down into it mournfully. “Now I just want to spend the rest of the night cleaning,” he says, turning to glower at everyone. “You guys are disgusting.” 

“Not all of us are!” hot Jay says. “And I, for one, think it’s time for us to invest in a larger apartment. I am willing to camboy for tips if it helps.” 

“Okay, first of all? Camboy is not a fucking verb? And I’ve told you, you are not allowed to show your face online for any-- Activity, like that-- Because it’s my face, too! And I have a reputation, I have a family--” 

“We’re your family!” Jay shouts, before he can stop himself. “Like it or not, and he’s right, we need to do something about the lack of space situation. Don’t you have any money from selling Mike’s place?”

“I was renting,” big Mike says. “And in case it’s not obvious from the fucking bounty we just brought home, it costs a lot just to feed you guys.” 

“Just apply for a bunch of different jobs and let us each take one as if we’re you,” stud Mike says. “What’s so hard about that?”

The two originals glance at each other as if they’ve considered that idea and rejected it for some reason they don’t want to repeat in front of the clones. 

“They don’t trust us not to fuck it up,” hot Jay says, sneering. “They think they’re the only ones who know how to properly be Mike and Jay.” 

“You guys have been on Earth for less than two months,” original Jay says. “And you guys haven’t even existed for that long!” he says, turning this accusation on stud Mike. 

“Doesn’t mean we couldn’t stock shelves during a night shift in a warehouse,” stud Mike says. “We’re not stupid. You two treat us like we can’t even wipe our own asses without you around.”

“Quit being disgusting!” original Jay says, now nearly shouting. Big Mike edges toward him, either in protective support or to calm him down. “Obviously you’re all fine within the boundaries of this apartment, but it’s a big fucking world out there, and the last time one of you ventured out into it things didn’t exactly go so great, did they?”

Hot Jay looks slapped, then quickly tries to scoff and act like he’s amused. The original cringes like he knows that was cruel, but Jay is still mad on hot Jay’s behalf, despite just recently having wanted to kill him.

“Look,” original Jay says. “I’m sorry-- I know-- Obviously I’m stressed, too, living like this--”

“Oh, forget it,” hot Jay says, turning to go. “I don’t want to go stock shelves somewhere anyway. Ew.”

He leaves, and original Jay deflates. Big Mike rubs his shoulders. Shrimp Jay continues eating honey roasted peanuts at the kitchen table as if he doesn’t give a fuck about any of this. The peanuts were stud Mike’s special request item, but he always lets shrimp Jay eat his food and otherwise walk all over him. 

“You’re quiet,” Jay says to nerd Mike, who has been looming silently behind him during all of this. “Don’t you have an opinion?”

“On working in a warehouse?” nerd Mike says. He doesn’t look especially enthused by the idea.

“Or-- Anywhere, I don’t know, sure.” 

Nerd Mike shrugs and looks around at the other two Mikes as if for a cue about how to handle his Jay’s pissy attitude. It makes Jay furious and also sort of giddy, because he likes the idea of being nerd Mike’s personal Jay. 

“We’ll think about it,” original Jay says tiredly. “I’m gonna get dinner started. Jays, come help me. Mikes, I believe you have chores.” 

“Are you including me when you say that?” big Mike asks.

“Yes! We all have assignments on the chore board, you know this!” 

“But I paid for the groceries.”

“That doesn’t mean-- Urghghgh, whatever.” 

Original Jay goes to the fridge, grabs a beer and drinks from it rather urgently after popping the cap. Jay feels for him, but also wishes he was handling this better. At the same time, he’s glad he’s not the Jay in charge here. 

“I don’t see what the big deal is myself,” shrimp Jay says when he’s chopping onions for the soup that original Jay has chosen to make for dinner. They’re all so tired of healthy soups that they complain about them daily, but the original is stubborn and merciless about his boring menus. 

“About what?” Jay says when original Jay just ignores this and goes on staring at the chicken he’s browning in a frying pan.

“Living together like we are,” shrimp Jay says. “I like it. Except when you’re yelling at me for no reason, and yes, I did finally find my phone, thanks for asking.” 

Jay wants to snap at him, why should I give a fuck about your phone? He restrains himself, since things are already tense. Hot Jay has been absolved from helping with dinner, presumably so he can have his private pout in the bedroom after being so cruelly reminded of his ordeal out in the real world. 

“Well, I’m not going to sleep on a couch for the rest of my life,” Jay says, thinking of how he and nerd Mike won’t fit comfortably on either of the two couches together, meaning no nighttime cuddling, which he’s longed for to a ridiculous degree. “It’s no fair that me and nerd Mike are the only two who don’t get a bed.” 

“I can’t afford a pull out couch yet,” original Jay says, mumbling this with a defeated tone that makes Jay feel bad for him. “I’m working on it.” 

“How about a tent?” Jay says, and he’s joking at first, but when Jay looks up at him with incredulity he stares back as if he’s serious, thinking about how nice it would be to have a privacy wall that he could zip up around himself-- And nerd Mike, too. “What?” he says. “Even a nice camping tent can’t cost as much as a couch with a pull out bed. And that way we wouldn’t constantly have to be unfolding it and putting it away.” Because he’s going to want sex with nerd Mike at times other than designated bedtime, and the bathroom scenario was not ideal. 

“Fine,” original Jay says. “Look for one online. Try to find a used one.” 

“Ew, no, what if it smells?” 

“You sound like hot Jay.” Original Jay sighs and hands over the wooden spoon he was using to push the chicken around. “Keep an eye on that pan, I’m gonna go check on him.” 

Jay waits until the original has been closed up in the bedroom with hot Jay for a few minutes, presumably apologizing, coddling him as usual. When one of the Mikes turns on the vacuum in the living room, he elbows shrimp Jay.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, keeping his voice low even with the vacuum noise providing cover. 

“Hmm?” shrimp Jay says. 

“Uhh. Does hot Jay ever, like, talk about wanting to fuck nerd Mike?”

Shrimp Jay looks up from his onion chopping and makes a semi-horrified face, then giggles in an infuriating way. 

“What?” Jay snaps. “Why’s that funny? He’s almost as horny as you are, and I don’t know how stud Mike could possibly satisfy him with you wearing that dick out all day long.”

This only makes shrimp Jay laugh harder. He takes accusations of insatiable sluttiness as compliments. 

“Are you _worried_?” shrimp Jay says. “That hot Jay is going to steal that nerd?”

“Keep your voice down! No, I--” 

“How could anyone prefer that Mike to my stud? My Mike is even better than the original! We all know it.” 

“We do not! Nobody thinks that except you!”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re lying to yourself, pal. I’m the only honest Jay, as usual.” 

Jay withholds all the insults he wants to sling. Shrimp Jay is lucky that what took place in the shower earlier has him in a good mood. He’d like to throttle the little fucker, and he could kick his ass easily if he wanted to. 

“You’re the only Jay with his head fully up his ass, is more like it,” he says, as mildly as he can. “Don’t _you_ worry? I mean, they don’t call him hot Jay for nothing.” 

“Worry about what?” 

“Uh!” Jay feels mean already, but he can’t not say it. “That stud Mike, you know, could prefer the other Jay.” 

“No, he likes me the best.” 

“How do you know?”

“He told me!” 

Jay snorts, as if that’s a stupid line of reasoning, but when shrimp Jay contentedly gets back to chopping vegetables, he’s the one who feels dumb. 

“You and nerd Mike should be nicer to hot Jay,” shrimp Jay says. “If you know what I’m saying.” 

“I’m sure I don’t want to know, and we’re not-- We don’t--”

“It’s fun when it’s two Jays against one Mike. You remember.” 

“We weren’t _against_ him. If anything you were against me, when we were-- With big Mike. You’d practically bite my nose off trying to get his dick for yourself.” 

“Oh, forget it! I can’t explain to you about sex. If you want my advice, I think you should have some with that nerd so you’ll be less uptight about it.” 

Jay is setting down the wooden spoon so he can wring shrimp Jay’s neck when hot Jay walks in looking smug about something and comes to stand behind them. 

“Hey,” he says, putting his hand on Jay’s shoulder. “What’s this I hear about you wanting a tent to live in? Are you nesting? Is glasses boy invited inside with you?”

“You’re an asshole,” Jay mutters, kicking at shrimp Jay when he laughs. 

“No, I’m not. I’m happy for you. With those two in charge we’ll all be living in tents sooner or later. Might as well invest in a nice one while they still have some cash.”

“Are you still mad at old Jay?” shrimp Jay asks. “He didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” 

“We’re calling him old Jay now?” Jay says when hot Jay doesn’t immediately answer. 

“He is the oldest,” hot Jay says. “By a lot. No, I’m not mad at anybody. I just wanted to express my support for the tent idea.” 

“You’re making fun of me, but I don’t care.” 

“It’s always so convincing when you say you don’t care about something while looking like you’re going to cry about it.” 

Jay smacks him with the wooden spoon, which gets him complaining about soup stains on his shirt. Nerd Mike appears in the kitchen doorway and peers in at the three of them curiously. 

“Congrats on the tent,” hot Jay says, passing by him on the way to change his shirt. 

“Huh?” nerd Mike says. He looks at the other two Jays for guidance when hot Jay leaves without answering. 

“Nothing,” Jay says, fuming. “Just an idea I had about how to get some privacy. For sleep.”

“Sleep!” shrimp Jay says, snickering. 

Jay scowls at him, finding it hard to believe that he wanted to defend him earlier, when nerd Mike called him shrill. That’s absolutely what he is. Nerd Mike is quite astute about these things, really. 

“I asked Jay to buy me a tent,” Jay says to nerd Mike, deciding he might as well be direct, now that they’ve had their cocks in each other’s mouths. “I guess I’d set it up in the living room, in the corner where the floor lamp is now. I’m gonna put some kind of bedding inside and sleep there, and you can sleep there with me if it’s big enough.” 

He glances up from the pan and sneaks a look at nerd Mike. He seems confused at first, then he smiles in a way that comes slowly and makes Jay’s heart pound. 

“Please also fuck him in the tent,” shrimp Jay says. “He needs some dick, he’s being a real bitch-- owwww, stop! Jayy!! He’s hurting me!”

Jay is a little surprised he didn’t call for stud Mike, who is the one who comes running. In the interest of avoiding a fist fight between him and nerd Mike over defending their respective Jays, Jay lets shrimp Jay out of the chokehold and slinks out of the kitchen, hoping nerd Mike will follow him. He looks back and smiles when he sees that he has. 

They research tents together on the computer. It’s cozy and exciting, especially because nerd Mike keeps leaning over to kiss his cheek or lick his ear. Jay snickers and tries to act like this is annoying, not sure why he’s bothering with the coy act. He can tell Mike knows he actually likes it. 

After dinner, Jay brings the original in to see what they picked out: a spacious but lightweight tent that only costs a hundred and twenty dollars, something called a Powerflex sleeping pad, several sleeping bags, an overstuffed comforter, and some pillows. The original Jay sighs tremendously when all of this adds up to over three hundred dollars, but he still clicks through to purchase all of it for them. 

“Thank you!” Jay says, leaning down to the computer chair to hug the original around his shoulders. He only ever shows the Jays physical affection when he can tell they really need it. Being able to tell is sort of his speciality. 

“You deserve it,” the original Jay says, patting him. “You’ve been very patient.” 

“Are you okay?” Jay asks, still wrapped around him and keeping his voice quiet, though they’re the only two in the room, the rest getting ready for tonight’s TNG episode. 

“Of course I’m okay.” He squirms out of Jay’s grip and stands, shrugging. “Are you?”

“Uh-huh.” He almost wants to tell this Jay about what happened with him and nerd Mike, though he suspects he’ll already have discussed it with hot Jay. Those two like to gossip about everyone else and pretend they’re the most emotionally enlightened Jays as they discuss developments. 

“Don’t tell the others I said this,” original Jay says, stepping a little closer, “But if we do end up letting you guys get part time jobs or whatever, uhh. I’d want you to go first, out of the Jays. You’re the most level-headed and responsible one. Like, by far.” 

This compliment and the opportunity to maybe cuddle with nerd Mike during the group viewing of TNG carries Jay into the living room as if on a cloud, and he can’t keep the dumb grin off his face as he settles in beside nerd Mike and lets him press their shoulders together. 

“You look happy,” nerd Mike says, flopping his hand over so that it’s resting with seeming casualness against Jay’s thigh. 

“The tent is on its way,” Jay says, showing him his dumb teeth when he smiles again. “And--” He drags Mike closer to whisper the rest in his ear: “I may be able to make some money to buy us more cool stuff soon. Stay tuned.”

Nerd Mike kisses him on the nose when he pulls back. When Jay glances over at the others, he fully expects them all to be staring, and they are. Shrimp Jay already has his cheek resting on stud Mike’s reclining chest, and hot Jay is beside him, side-eying the two dorks on the end of the couch with a tiny grin, as if he thinks they’re cute or something, which would be annoying if Jay wasn’t in such a good mood. The originals are on their loveseat as usual, big Mike’s arm wrapped around his Jay’s shoulders. 

“Can we start the episode now?” big Mike asks, lifting the remote. 

Jay nods, not sure why they’re deferring to him. He waits until the opening credits are finished to rest his cheek on nerd Mike’s shoulder. He smells so good, like the fancy body wash they used together in the shower, dirtied up just enough by the sweat he worked up while doing chores before dinner. Jay has to fight the urge to ignore the episode and nuzzle at him the way shrimpy Jay shamelessly does with stud Mike. 

By the end of the episode he’s sleepy and comfortable, letting nerd Mike stroke his bicep just under the sleeve of his t-shirt, but also beginning to panic a little about what will happen when the others have disappeared into their respective bedrooms and all the apartment’s lights are out. He and nerd Mike will be on their separate couches as usual, or will they? The tent seems like such a good, easy solution, but it’s not here yet, and Jay isn’t sure if nerd Mike will expect to fuck him out here on one of couches. He’s not even sure if he wants to wait for the tent himself, a little hard in his jeans just for the way Mike strokes his skin while keeping his eyes on the TV. 

The episode wraps up and they have their usual discussion afterward. Big Mike and stud Mike are smug as usual, with their superior Star Trek knowledge and tendency to act like the Jays’ questions are cute but clueless. Nerd Mike is quiet and smiley at Jay’s side, not trying to talk over the other Mikes like he normally does. The original Jay makes the tea that’s supposed to help him sleep and only big Mike joins him in having some. They head for their room, probably exhausted from work, though Jay expects to hear them fucking within twenty minutes of their bedroom door shutting. Big Mike is pretty quiet, but the original Jay is potentially the loudest of the Jays when getting fucked, either because he can’t help himself or because it’s his apartment and he refuses to restrain himself while enjoying his Mike’s dick. 

“Come on,” shrimp Jay says, leading stud Mike away by the hand when the headboard starts knocking against the wall in the originals’ bedroom. “You too,” he says to hot Jay. 

“You are not the boss of me,” hot Jay says, but he gets up and stretches his arms over his head so that his t-shirt lifts to show his perfect abs, probably on purpose. “But I am going to take a shower. G’night, glasses. G’night, tent boy,” he adds, reaching over to mess up Jay’s hair. 

Jay swats him away, though tent boy is an improvement over past nicknames. He glances over at nerd Mike when they’re alone together, trying not to look sheepish and knowing that he’s doing it anyway, with his lips pressed together and his head slightly lowered in Mike’s direction, eyebrows lifting like he’s asking what happens now. He’s seen the original Jay doing this to big Mike, and he knows it’s an embarrassing posture they share. 

“You’re so fucking cute,” nerd Mike says, his voice almost breaking, and when he swoons over for a kiss Jay shuts his eyes and lets him have one. He doesn’t even laugh under his breath to diffuse the startling intensity of it, just opens his lips for Mike’s tongue. 

They shut out the lights, strip off their jeans and stretch out together on the couch under a blanket that smells like Mike. They barely fit, with Jay squeezed between Mike’s body and the back cushions. They’re both hard, but not really doing anything about it aside from reaching up under each other’s shirts to tease nipples and stroke chest hair, lingering on the spots that make the other one shiver. Jay is waiting for hot Jay to get out of the shower and for the noises coming from the sex bedroom to cease before he tries anything more advanced, and maybe nerd Mike has the same idea. The originals have gone quiet. Being properly middle-aged, they usually fall asleep first. 

“What was it like to really be in space?” nerd Mike asks, his big hand closed over Jay’s ribs under his shirt, holding him warmly in place. He took his glasses off when they turned out the lights, and his eyes look so huge, right in front of Jay’s, the glow that spills into the living room from the kitchen window landing there like a moonbeam bullseye. 

“Mhm,” Jay says, fidgeting against him, worried his answer will be disappointing. “Boring, mostly. We were only allowed to be in this tiny living area on the ship. It had two rooms, one for sleeping and one for doing all the stuff that made us more like Jays. Oh, and a bathroom,” he added hastily, not wanting Mike to picture the Jays using a bucket or something. 

“What do you mean by stuff that made you more like Jays?”

“Like they plugged us into machines that taught us English and cultural references and stuff. Then we had to do puzzles and tasks to prove it was working, that we were learning.”

“Jesus.” Mike’s grip on him tightens a little. “That must have been a wild ride. I don’t remember learning anything. We just woke up like this.” 

Jay exhales and shifts his hand on Mike’s belly, dragging his thumb through the hair that trails down into his boxers. He doesn’t exactly remember what it was like to be blank-minded either, before they were brought up to Earth-relevant speed by alien tech. 

“I was the second Jay they made,” he says, whispering like it’s a secret. He’s barely talked about any of this, even with the other Jays. “And shrimp Jay was the first. I think that’s why he’s so clingy. He was alone there while the aliens tried to figure out how to make a clone who was more like the one the old man wanted, which was the hot one. They made him last. So for a while it was just me and the shrimp. And when they first dumped me in there with him he was terrified of me for about ten minutes. But after he realized I wasn’t gonna hurt him he sort of crept over and wrapped himself around me like I was his long lost brother. Which. I guess I was.” 

“Aww,” nerd Mike says. “Poor little guy.” 

“It was cold on the ship, even in our rooms where they tried to make it feel okay for humans.” Jay wasn’t sure where he was going with this, and then he was. “Pretty much ever since I’d been alive, until we came to Earth, I’d have shrimpy wrapped around me when we slept. And then the hot Jay, too, when he was tossed in there with us. We would fight and annoy each other during our waking cycle, like we do here, but during sleep cycle we’d all cling to each other for dear life. It was comforting, when we were confused, which we usually were. We had a strict schedule for who got to sleep in the middle, because that was the best, where you’d feel the most warm and safe. I’d think about shrimpy having to sleep alone before I got there and feel so bad for him.”

He hears himself talking too much and breaks eye contact, not sure why he’s trying to explain why he likes being held at night so much. He’s pretty sure nerd Mike won’t object to being the one who does it from now on, for warmth in winter if nothing else. It’s already started to get colder in the apartment, the dipping temperatures outside leaking in a bit. 

“It’s amazing that you were really up there,” Mike says. “You’ve basically lived a real Star Trek life. I’m kinda jealous.” 

“It was mostly so boring,” Jay says. “Until the originals showed up and broke us out. That was exciting. And scary.”

“I wish I’d been there with you. To help, and just. To see everything.” 

Jay nods and kisses him, pulling him closer. Oh how he wishes this Mike had been with him the entire time. He supposes it doesn’t matter now, and hooks his leg over Mike’s hip, laughing against his mouth when this makes him gasp. Thinking about their escape makes Jay remember seeing the pain and horror in big Mike’s eyes when he and the original Jay found the horde of Jay clones, all of them cowering together in the back corner of their sleeping quarters when the two strangers burst in. It was quickly apparent that the one who looked like them wanted to save them, because they recognized him like a part of themselves already, and that the big guy who was with him loved them possibly even more. Mike had looked so broken up by the thought of their plight that Jay had loved him back almost right away. But that was nothing compared to how nerd Mike looks at him now, as if he’s some singular, perfect thing that fell from space just for him. 

There’s a noise from one of the bedrooms, and they pause their kissing to breathe hard against each other’s faces, listening. Someone walks out into the hallway, then into the bathroom, takes a leak and flushes before returning to whichever Mikes and/or Jays are waiting for him. Jay sighs and meets his Mike’s glowy eyes again. 

“The tent should be here by Friday,” he says. 

“What will we do to break it in?” Mike asks, and he grins at the answering expression on Jay’s face. They’re lying close enough that he can see it without his glasses, apparently. “Just kidding,” he says. 

“Well. You don’t have to be kidding. I want to do things, uh. Inside the tent. With you.”

“Yeah?”

Jay grunts and looks away again, embarrassed. His face is hot, and he’s hard in his boxers. He shifts his thigh and tries not to make a sound when he can feel that Mike is hard, too. 

“Did you like getting fucked by the original Jay?” he asks, his heart slamming. He’s heard about it from hot Jay, who presumably discussed it with the original during one of their gossip sessions. 

“Mhm, yeah,” Mike says, and Jay looks up at him, kind of annoyed that he just admitted it like that. “But the best part was stud Mike sort of, uhh. Fucking him down into me, to put it crudely. Like, the look on Jay’s face while he took it. He really liked it, and since he was in me, it was like I could feel how good he was feeling, like we were connected. Sorry, do you want to hear this?”

“Well, I asked!” Jay huffs and moves his leg against Mike’s erection again, under the blanket. “I just mean, like. Would you want, or-- Would you want to be--”

“I want to try it on top,” Mike says. He looks so serious and sort of hungry that Jay almost laughs in his face, though he wants what Mike is suggesting so bad that his ass clenches up around nothing at the thought. “With you,” Mike adds. 

“Yeah,” Jay says, vaguely. “Not now, though. I don’t want one of them walking out here naked to get a glass of water while I’m-- Maybe when the tent gets here.” 

“Sure, yeah, we can wait as long as you want.” 

“Do you want to come?” Jay asks, whispering. “Before we go to sleep?”

“God, yeah. I’m so-- What, um. What do you want? I’ll do anything you want.”

Jay snorts and imagines asking him to strip naked and run around the block. Not that he’d ever be so cruel. But would Mike actually do it? Is he really up for anything, and for letting Jay call the shots? He’s noticed the other Jays do so, with their Mikes. He was never sure he’d have it in him, till now. 

“I liked it in the shower, before,” he says, mumbling, embarrassed again. “Just, like. Rubbing them together.” 

Mike starts to laugh, and stops when Jay glares at him. 

“Sorry,” Mike says. “You’re just so-- The way you called our dicks ‘them.’ That was really cute.”

“Stop calling me cute and get your dick out.” 

Mike obeys him with an urgency that Jay likes. Jay bites his lip and pushes his boxers down, too, until they’re bunched awkwardly around his thighs. They both moan when they shuffle together, the heat of Mike’s thick shaft sliding against Jay’s more modest but not exactly small one. He likes that it feels small, compared to Mike’s, while he humps cluelessly, sluttilly against him. 

“Fuck that’s good,” Mike says, his breath humid against Jay’s lips as they grip at each other’s backs and buck their hips under the blanket, graceless and desperate already, like they’re swordfighting with their dicks or something. 

“So good,” Jay agrees, whining this out in a way that he almost regrets, though he’s pretty sure Mike won’t laugh at him now that their dicks are jammed together. “Nnh, yeah, wh-- Will you, like, get on top, on top of me, please?”

Mike nods and shimmies fully out of his boxers under the blanket. Jay does the same while Mike gropes for a handful of tissues from the box on the little table beside the couch. 

“Good thinking,” Jay says when Mike crouches over him, holding the tissues. “Don’t want to mess up your bed.” 

“I could also lick it off you,” Mike says, and then his almost-naked body is pressing down against Jay’s, warm and heavy, and they’re both groaning from the relief of so much skin to skin contact, loud enough to be heard in the bedrooms, if anyone is still awake. 

Jay doesn’t care who hears them. He lets himself feel every part of this as the blanket slides down and slips halfway off of them: how good it is to just fuck his dick mindlessly against Mike’s, and to be held down by him, to spread his legs around Mike’s body and wrap them around his back. Mike is sweltering hot above him and Jay wants more of the heat of him everywhere, especially when their mouths connect, tongues sliding together when they can get coordinated enough to kiss while also moaning and dry-humping. 

“Has anyone even touched your ass?” Mike asks, pulling back to exhale this question onto Jay’s face. “I mean, they probably have--” 

“Big Mike did.” 

Is now the time to tell him how much he’d loved having that Mike’s mouth there, and ask for him to try it? No, that should probably wait for the tent, too. The idea of being seen like that is mortifying, and Jay is still too chicken to bring it up, anyway. He pecks Mike’s kiss-puffy lips and says nothing, leaving his history of having his ass touched to Mike’s imagination. 

“Fingers?” Mike says, whispering, and the implication makes Jay shiver underneath him. 

“Not really,” Jay says, also whispering. He’s of course fingered himself, lots, but there’s no reason to say so. “Never mind, he-- You could, um. Use fingers. If you want to.” 

Mike nods and kisses him. He leans over the side of the couch to grope around underneath it for the bottle of lube that lives there.

“Ew,” he says, because the bottle is all sticky. “Who left it like this?”

“Probably stud and shrimp. They’re such animals.”

Mike snorts and kisses Jay’s chin. He pops the lube open and looks at him uncertainly. 

“I’ll roll over,” Jay says, remembering that Jays need to call the shots with Mikes. “Just keep the blanket over me, okay?” 

“Okay. Uhh. Should I put my glasses back on?”

Jay isn’t sure why this makes him laugh hard as he’s flopping over onto his stomach. He just knows he likes it when Mike spanks his bare ass in retaliation. 

“Oh,” Jay says, rolling his hips back without meaning to. “Ah, no-- You can just, like, feel around blindly, under the blanket. That’s hot or something.”

“Hot or something,” Mike says, mimicking his voice, and Jay turns to glare, sees him grinning. “You want me to spank you again?”

“No!” Jay says, though he does. “It’s too loud.”

“Yeah, true. Wouldn’t want shrimpy to make fun of you for liking it.”

“I don’t care what he thinks! I just-- Mmph. Are you doing ass stuff to me or what?”

Jay buries his burning face in the couch cushions after asking this too loudly. He imagines the original Jay snickering into his Mike’s chest in their bedroom, though they’re both almost certainly deep in sleep by now. He keep his moans as soft as he can as Mike starts kneading at his ass in the dark, under that blanket. Mike’s touch is clumsy but gentle, and as soon as he spreads Jay’s ass cheeks and rubs the pad of his thumb around his hole all Jay can think is oh god I’m gonna come, but he doesn’t, not yet. 

“Fuck,” Mike whispers, pressing in a little. “So hot, right here.”

Jay realizes he means temperature-wise, since he’s currently unable to see anything. He whimpers into the cushions and pushes his ass back against that not-enough pressure, his knees spreading shamelessly. His cock is throbbing between his legs, untouched and leaking. Maybe they should just fuck, he thinks, when Mike rubs a lube-slicked finger in tight circles, either teasing him or just going too slow, not pushing inside. 

“Put one in,” Jay says, barely loud enough to hear. His heart is slamming and he’s sweating, can feel droplets rolling down over his sides, tickling him. “Please, pluh-- _Oh_ , fuck yes--”

He’s wanted this so bad. He even cried about it, back when the aliens gave them whatever it was that made not having it hurt in a very literal way. He jams himself back onto Mike’s thick finger, whimpering and pulling his fists over his face to hide from how much he likes this. 

“So tight,” Mike says, hushed and worshipful. “God. Does that feel good?”

He rubs Jay’s ass cheek after asking, to prompt him to respond or calm him down, because Jay is making sputtering non-word noises. Jay nods, then realizes Mike can’t see that. 

“S’good,” he slurs, clenching up tight around Mike’s finger on the sweet drag of the pull out, wanting it back. “Fuck, don’t stop-- Fuck me, okay? Fuck me, just, fuck me, oh--”

He means with Mike’s cock but his finger feels so good, once Mike has it really working into him, once he’s hitting that spot just right and then rubbing it hard, almost mean, when he realizes what he’s found. Jay comes without remembering to grab the tissues. Mike makes a pleased sound under his breath, under the blanket, and leaves his finger inside while Jay’s ass spasms crazily and he just keeps unloading, soft sobs of relief buried in the cushion. 

“I wanna see your face next time,” Mike says when he pops out from under the blanket. He turns Jay onto his side, slotting his dick in against Jay’s hip. “With my glasses on.” 

“I’m--” Jay pants, still recovering. “I’m not, like. A cute, uh. Orgasmer. I look stupid.” 

“Bullshit,” Mike says, and kisses him. He finds Jay’s hand and brings it to his dick. They both moan, and Jay grips him tight, pumps. “How will I ever get that into your tiny body?” Mike asks, reaching around to squeeze Jay’s ass cheek hard. He doesn’t really look worried, just like he’s enjoying the thought. 

“I’ll make it fit,” Jay says, as if he can will his body to change for Mike’s cock. “I want it-- So bad, Mike.” 

Mike comes with a groan, spilling all over Jay’s fingers and pressing his face to Jay’s hot cheek. They both breathe through it, clutching at each other, keeping close. Jay has never felt so good after coming. Not even earlier, in the shower, on their feet with hot Jay pounding on the door. This is different. He’s floating, and safe, too, with Mike poured all around him. 

Their come quickly becomes gross, cold and sticky, all over them and the blanket, and they can only ignore it while kissing sleepily for so long. Mike does what he can with the tissues, wincing. 

“I’ll do laundry tomorrow,” he says.

“I’ll swallow it next time,” Jay says, and Mike looks thrilled. 

“Wish I hadn’t even waited this long,” Mike says. He’s pressing fast little kisses all over Jay’s cheeks, his hand sliding up under Jay’s now sweat-stinking t-shirt. “To make my move.” 

“You waited an appropriate amount of time,” Jay says, wanting to praise him for everything right now. Mike laughs and calls him cute again.

They try sleeping together on the big couch, but it’s too uncomfortable, and after dozing off and waking up with his neck already sore from the weird angle, Jay kisses Mike’s sleeping face and slips out from under his arm, groping for his boxers. Mike makes a protesting noise but doesn’t really wake up. Jay adjusts the come-crusted blanket over him, making sure it’s pulled up to cover his shoulders so he won’t get cold. 

The torture of waiting three more days for the tent to arrive is actually pretty sweet, at least for Jay. He feels like he’s constantly on edge but in the most pleasurable way, waiting to see what nerd Mike will do next: how he’ll look at Jay in front of the others, possessive and pining at the same time, how he’ll touch Jay’s waist while passing behind him in the too-crowded kitchen, and how quickly he’ll reach for Jay’s ass when they’re under the blanket together at night, after the others have gone quiet, both of them so keyed up by then they can barely stand it, kissing crazily after waiting for their private time together all day long. 

Everyone teases them about the tent, as if it’s some ritual set dressing for Jay’s big virginity loss ceremony. Original Jay takes pity on him, at least, and plans a movie theater outing for everyone else on the evening the tent is scheduled to arrive. 

“Are you sure you guys don’t want to come?” he asks when Jay and nerd Mike are setting up the tent in the corner where it will live. They’re both kind of shaky and avoiding each other’s eyes, because this has come to feel like almost too big of a deal. 

“I’m not interested in your weird-ass movies,” Jay says, though of course all the Jays and probably both the Mikes know the real reason he and nerd Mike will be staying behind. “And neither is Mike.” 

“Well. Okay. Next time I’ll pick something you’ll like.”

“What the hell are people going to think when they see all of us together?” hot Jay asks. He’s been pacing around the apartment all day, agitated about stepping out into the world again but not willing to admit it to anyone. “We’re gonna look like a freak show. Two sets of twins and a feral child out for family movie night?”

“Suddenly me and you look like twins?” original Jay says, eyebrows going up. 

“Well.” Hot Jay runs his hand through his hair, which has gotten long since he stopped going out for haircuts or anything else. “My hair’s better, and my body, also my skin--”

“Yeah, yeah,” original Jay says, waving him off with his hand. “Then don’t worry. People will think we’re brothers. Who cares what they think, anyway?”

Hot Jay scoffs and paces into the kitchen. The original glances over at Jay, where he’s squatting on the floor beside nerd Mike as they put their tent together. Both Jays realize that hot Jay probably wants to stay home, too, but he’s got to reenter the world eventually, and he’ll be safe with the others by his side. Jay is a little bit surprised that he’s not putting up more of a fight to keep from having to leave the apartment, but he has seemed all in favor of the tent and its purpose, even if he makes fun of Jay about it constantly. 

Everyone is dressed to go out into the cold by six o’clock, and it’s already dark outside. Jay and nerd Mike are on the couch, pretending to watch something dumb on TV, both of them tense. Jay almost wishes they’d been more chill about this, because he’s over the expectant, snickering way that everyone keeps looking at them, but he’s also extremely glad they’ll all be gone for hours, because god he needs this bad and he’s gonna be so loud, after three days of biting his tongue nearly in two to keep from shouting about how good three of Mike’s too-short fingers feel inside him on the couch at night. 

“Call me if you need anything,” original Jay says, backing toward the apartment’s front door while Mike pulls him by the arm, everyone else already lingering in the hallway outside. “I mean anything. Don’t hesitate.”

“We’ve been here without you before!” Jay says, blushing and embarrassed by his concern. It’s true that he’s never been alone here with just nerd Mike, or that any single Jay and Mike except the originals have enjoyed such privacy since the Jays came to Earth. “We’ll be fine.” 

“C’monnnn,” shrimp Jay says from the hallway, reaching in to help big Mike yank his Jay out with them. “I don’t want to miss the previews!” 

He winks at Jay and nerd Mike, and Jay grins at him appreciatively. Shrimp Jay is bundled up in winter wear, most of it original Jay’s and too big for him, and he looks hilarious, also cute. 

When they’re gone, Jay stares at the door until he can’t hear their voices or footsteps out in the hallway anymore. Then he looks over at Mike. 

“Well,” Mike says, looking more nervous than excited, like he could possibly mess this up. “What should we, uh. Do first.”

“Let’s get in the tent,” Jay says, taking his hand. He’s perfectly aware that he’ll have to walk Mike through this, despite being the more virginal one. Mike likes to be told what to do. It’s one of many things Jay loves about him. 

Their tent is huge, almost too big for the corner of the room where they’ve installed it, light blue with a zip out opening that converts into a little fabric porch that Jay has envisioned them stretched out upon, on their bellies and watching TNG with the others. He zips it up behind them now, and smiles at Mike when they’re inside, kneeling on the foam pad, sleeping bags and blankets they’ve assembled there. The walls of the tent are made from a material that’s translucent enough to let in light, and Jay loves being surrounded by this blue glow already. There are window flaps toward the top of the back and side panels, but they’re zipped shut even with the others gone. 

“This was such a good idea,” Mike says, walking forward on his knees so he can hold Jay’s face in his hands. He brushes his thumbs over the fuzzy blond stubble on Jay’s jaw. Jay has let it grow in this week, though he can’t seem to grow a proper mustache without losing his nerve and shaving everything during the awkward-looking stage. 

“I put the lube over there,” Jay says, pointing, and Mike laughs. “What?”

“Nothing. I saw the lube. Just let me kiss you for a second.” 

“We’ve kissed a lot already,” Jay mumbles, but he opens his lips for Mike’s tongue anyway.

“Not today, we haven’t,” Mike says, speaking into Jay’s mouth. “Your mouth gets me so hard.”

“Jesus,” Jay says, flushing, not sure why this sounds so filthy. He thinks about Mike’s mouth, and where he wants it, and lets Mike suck on his lips. 

“They’re so _pink_ ,” Mike says, dragging his thumb across Jay’s bottom lip. “Even before I kiss you.”

“So what. Same as all the Jays.”

“Nnn, nope. Yours is the pinkest.”

Jay is going to say something stupid like, yeah, ‘cause I’m the fattest, but he’s not sure that even makes sense and doesn’t need to fish for compliments, not when he already feels this good. He lets Mike press him down to the cozy mess of their brand new bedding, piled just high enough to save their backs from the hardness of the floor. 

“Take your shirt off,” Mike says, whispering this like the plea that he knows it is.

Jay doesn’t want to, because Mike is wearing his glasses. They’ve talked about this for the past three days, and Mike’s glasses staying on has always been an ironclad requirement for him. Jay sighs and lets Mike push the hem of his shirt up, exposing his flabby belly and the fact that he is the hairiest of all the Jays, which feels like an indictment, even though he loves Mike’s hairy chest and arms and everything. Mike has touched all over Jay’s chest at night on the couch, under his shirt, and it feels good, it’s fine-- Jay rips his shirt the rest of the way off like a bandaid, wishing he could manually power down his brightly blushing cheeks. He feels like he’s glowing with shame, too obvious. He hasn’t even eaten any of those Funyuns, thinking all week of this moment. 

“Fuck,” Mike says, and his hands go right for Jay’s tits, just like big Mike’s did once. “Yeah,” Mike says, squeezing them. He seems to be talking to himself, and only squeezes harder when Jay whines, Mike’s thumbs dragging over those sensitive nipples. 

Jay squirms and leaks into his boxers, wants his jeans off now, too. Mike feels huge overtop him, and looks a little crazed behind the lenses of his glasses, his tongue darting out to wet his lips over and over while he plays with Jay’s chest like a man who’s been starved for it. 

“You can use your mouth,” Jay says, softly, like this is a favor he’s doing for Mike. 

Mike dives down and engages his teeth right away, gently but purposeful enough to get Jay shouting when Mike gives one nipple a soft bite and again when he tugs on it. Mike is suddenly brimming with confidence, holding Jay down and sucking at his skin, moving between his nipples and his neck. Jay loves it, could almost cry for how much he loves it. Now that they’re inside the tent and Mike’s nervousness seems to have evaporated, it’s a relief to just lie back and let Mike have him. 

“You smell so fucking good right here,” Mike says, nosing at Jay’s soft jaw. “Makes me nuts.” 

“Sorry,” Jay says, and he laughs when Mike does. 

“You should be,” Mike says, biting him there. Jay can feel Mike’s glasses against his cheek, and when he pulls back they’re all smudged and foggy. Mike straddles Jay’s hips and takes off his t-shirt, then the glasses, but just to clean them with the shirt. “I’m gonna make him get me contacts,” Mike says, putting them back on. “It’s not fair that only stud Mike gets to use the old ones.” 

“They’re so broke,” Jay says. “And I like your glasses.” 

“But they won’t stay put while I ravage you. And you steam ‘em up.” 

“Maybe I like them steamed.” 

Mike grins and dives down again to lick into Jay’s mouth. He get his hands down between their bodies and starts working open Jay’s jeans, then leans back to tug them down along with his boxers in an impatient yank that makes Jay’s cock twitch and his legs spread once they’re freed. He snickers and palms himself lightly, watching Mike remove his socks with weird reverence. 

“Fuck, finally,” Mike says, sounding almost like he’s going to cry when he’s on his knees between Jay’s legs, staring down at his full nakedness with glasses-enhanced vision. “Baby,” he says, touching Jay’s ankle like suddenly he’s not sure what’s allowed.

“You especially can’t call me that now!” Jay says, but he’s laughing, much giddier for the feeling of being exposed like this than he’d ever have expected. It’s the tent, he thinks, the way it seems to glow around them like a blue force field. He feels protected and okay, better than okay with Mike looking at him like he’s perfect and palming his cock through his jeans in a way that makes Jay think he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, his gaze scanning from Jay’s eyes down to his erection and then back up again, like he’s getting off just by looking. 

Once he’s snapped out of this trance, Mike seems determined to kiss and nip at Jay all over, not biting hard enough to leave marks but sometimes sucking on the softest parts of him for so long that Jay whines and pushes at his head, not wanting to hear it from the other Jays about hickeys later. He realizes when Mike is down between his legs, licking and scraping his teeth over the soft insides of Jay’s spread apart thighs, that now is as good a time as any for him to ask for what he wants almost as much as finally getting Mike’s big dick inside him. 

“Um,” he says, tugging at Mike’s hair. “Can I, uh, make a special request?”

“What?” Mike says. He lifts his head and laughs like the question is ridiculous, rubbing his thumbs over the flushed skin that he’s been working on with his mouth. “Of course you can. I’m here to serve.” 

“Oh fuck off,” Jay says fondly, his hips flexing up instinctively for how much he likes Mike saying that. “I, uh. I’ll preface this request by telling you that I cleaned myself really thoroughly this morning, um. In preparation for this.” 

“For-- Me fucking you?”

“Well, yes, and--” Jay groans and feels his face heating up again. “This other thing. That I like.” He doesn’t want to mention that the big Mike showed it to him the first time they were together, but it’s not like he’s been with other people, ever. 

Mike waits, patient and sweet, still rubbing at Jay’s skin. He seems addicted to the soft, hairless insides of Jay’s thighs, and Jay wonders if he’s trying to work up the nerve to ask to move his mouth a little lower, too. 

“It’s ass eating,” Jay finally blurts, feeling his flush spread down over his throat, toward his chest. “Do you know about it?”

Mike stares at him, very serious for a blink, then does a full-body jerk with the laugh he tries and fails to contain.

Jay glares at him and tries to pull his legs together. Mike holds them open and shakes his head, tries to stop laughing.

“Sorry, sorry-- Oh-- God, baby, sweetheart, aw--”

“Do not call me that!” 

Jay turns his head and huffs when Mike surges up to try to for a kiss on the lips. Mike settles for licking Jay’s burning cheek and nuzzling his nose there, moaning under his breath while Jay melts in mortification and scowls at the side of the tent. 

“‘Course I’ll do that,” Mike says, murmuring this against Jay’s hot face. “I’ve seen porn, ya know.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe I don’t want it anymore.”

“Don’t be so sensitive,” Mike says, reaching down to tweak a nipple that’s already puffy from his attention. Jay squirms and moans, turning his face against Mike’s without meaning to. He opens his mouth to tell Mike he’s not sensitive, he’s fucking _not_ , but then Mike’s tongue is there, pushing in past his lips, and Jay grunts but licks back at him, too turned on by how Mike is holding him down and teasing him to be as mad about either thing as he wants to be. “I’m not laughing at you,” Mike says, moving down to lick Jay’s ear. “I’m just happy.”

“Hmph,” Jay says. “Okay. Well. Go be happy with your tongue up my ass, ya dickhead.” 

Mike snickers and this time Jay laughs, too, then moans and pushes at Mike when he tickles his fingers up Jay’s sides. Jay isn’t sure if he wants to do this on his back or on his front, but before he can really decide Mike is down between his legs, pushing them up against Jay’s chest in a way that makes Jay gasp and also makes his stomach fat roll up. 

“Sorry,” Mike says, freezing. “Too rough?” 

“No! God, just. I’m-- Ready, please?”

Mike smirks and leans down to pull Jay’s ass cheeks apart. Jay is breathing hard, staring at the roof of the tent. He gasps again when he feels Mike’s hot breath where he’s wanted it, and moans when the tip of his tounge traces a tight circle there, around the rim.

“Fuck,” Jay says, forgetting about his stomach fat and Mike’s foggy glasses. His hands go to his chest when Mike licks into him more boldly, pulling Jay’s ass cheeks open wider for better access in a way that feels so good, like he’s fully in Mike’s hands now. Even when he plays with his nipples while Mike tongue fucks him like he’s been waiting for permission, the twinge of pleasure-pain from his own fingers feels like something Mike is doing to him, too. 

Mike holds Jay’s hips up and back while he works, and Jay can feel it when his arms start to tire and tremble. Jay just moans and presses his ass down against Mike’s sopping wet, sloppy mouth, not ready for this part to end. He’s a little afraid of the next part, though he’s the one who begs for more every time Mike slides another finger into him, lately. He’s not afraid it will hurt, just afraid he might start crying for some other reason when he has Mike that close, deep inside him. 

“No, don’t bother,” Jay says when Mike starts to use his fingers between licks, pressing them in shallowly to feel how soft and ready Jay has gotten just from this. Mike lifts his face curiously and Jay shakes his head, then laughs at how fogged up his glasses are, poor Mike. “I don’t need any more prep,” Jay says. “Just-- Your cock, okay? I’m ready if you are.” 

“Mhmm,” Mike says, nodding. He looks kind of brainless when he takes his glasses off to clean them on his discarded shirt, like eating Jay’s ass made him high. Mike strips off his jeans and boxers and Jay admires him while he fumbles his socks off, staring down at Jay. “I’m ready, too,” Mike says, so gravely that Jay would have laughed if his heart wasn’t pounding so hard, the reverberations sort of freezing him in place under Mike’s gaze. “I want to do it like this,” Mike says, crawling over Jay on all fours and grabbing for the lube. “Face to face.”

“Of course,” Jay says. 

“I want to kiss you, uhh. Should I go brush my teeth?”

Jay shrugs. He really did clean himself well, and if Mike leaves the tent for even ten seconds it feels like some fragile thread between them might snap. 

“You tasted very clean,” Mike says, his lips hovering just over Jay’s.

“I am-- Very.” 

“Such a good boy, aren’t ya?”

Jay tries to laugh at this but it comes out like a whimper. He can hear Mike opening the lube while they kiss, then slicking his cock. He moans when Mike pulls back to nudge himself into place, and then again, more loudly, when Mike slides the blunt head of his cock around in teasing circles, just pressing in a little, grinning and watching Jay go crazy for it. 

“Goddamn,” Mike says. “I’ve wanted to see this look on your face so bad.”

“This, this look?”

“Mhm, like the o-g Jay had on his face when stud Mike pushed into him. That was hot, but. Fuck, I’ve wanted to see you get like that, so bad. I’m gonna lose it when it’s you, for me.” 

“Yeah,” Jay says, starting to push his hips down, wanting to whine for how much he wants to feel Mike pressing inside. “You can, when you-- You can lose it on my ass. I want you to.”

Mike falls forward for a growling kiss, his cock sliding through Jay’s spread open ass cheeks, the shaft teasing over his hole with infuriating, incredible, not-enough friction. He breaks the kiss and watches Jay’s face while he angles himself so he can get inside. 

“Will you clean ‘em for me?” he asks, voice tight. 

“Your-- Oh, yeah.” 

Jay grabs his discarded t-shirt and cleans the fog from Mike’s glasses, then puts them gently back in place. Mike blinks rapidly behind them, swallows.

“Thanks,” he says, whispering, and then he’s nudging his cock into place, pressing forward. 

His dick feels ten times bigger than it looks and Jay shouts at the burn of that first blunt inward push, then grabs Mike’s arms to keep him from pulling out when he asks if it hurts. It does, kinda, but in a way Jay has wanted and doesn’t want to stop, not now. 

“M’okay,” Jay manages to say, feeling like his lungs have been squished, like he can’t get enough breath for how big this feels, literally and otherwise. “Just, just-- Go slow.”

Mike nods and breathes out. His arms are shaking, and he’s sweating, drops of it streaking down his temples to slide along his jaw. The glasses are gonna fog again, Jay thinks, groaning for how good and weird and intense it feels as Mike works himself deeper in tiny stutters of his hips, his whole body radiating insane heat above Jay’s. He smells amazing, like sweat and sex and something spicy but clean underneath. He smells like a guy with a huge cock who knows how to fuck, and Jay laughs deliriously when he catches himself thinking so. 

Mike fucks the rest of the way in slowly, drawing out just a fraction and pushing in a little more deeply while Jay whines out encouragement and squeezes Mike’s arms, clenching up greedily around every new inch of Mike’s cock without meaning to or knowing how to stop. There’s something so sweet about the almost pained concentration on Mike’s face as he shudders all over and twitches his hips forward carefully, sort of grunting his shallow breaths out. Jay has to clean his glasses for him twice more before he’s all the way in, and when he collapses down onto Jay fully with a groan he seems exhausted and is shaking all over. 

“Baby,” Jay mouths almost soundlessly, trying the word out as his arms wrap around Mike, his ass locked so tightly around Mike’s dick that he wonders if hurts Mike a little, too, to be so thoroughly jammed together like this. 

“I heard that,” Mike says, lifting up onto his elbows. 

“You were meant to,” Jay says, which is a lie. He pushes Mike’s glasses back into place when they slide down his nose. “Don’t you want to take those off?” he asks. 

“Nope. Are you okay?”

“Mhmm-hmm.”

They kiss for a while and rock together, arms around each other. The rocking motion they’re both doing increasingly becomes less gentle and tentative, more urgent. Mike’s back is all sweaty, and when he pushes up onto his palms to look down at Jay, their chests peel apart wetly, damp with sweat. 

“I blasted the heat,” Mike confesses. He’s panting, and every choppy breath he exhales feels good for Jay, shifting Mike inside him. “Didn’t want you to be cold.”

“They’ll skin you for that when they get back. It’s expensive.” 

“I don’t care. I feel like-- I’d die for you, Jay.”

Jay wants to tell him not to talk about dying under any circumstances, but he can’t make his voice work or stop grinning, because of the way Mike says his name. It feels like it’s not a name that belongs to him, not fully, not really, until his Mike says it, and hearing it while Mike is buried so deep inside him is unbelievable, too good. 

“We’re not in Star Trek,” Jay says, reaching up to pet Mike’s sweaty hair, his cheek. “Or even in space. You don’t have to die for me.”

“I just mean, ah. You’re mine to take care of. Or, I want you to be. But I also want to fuck you so hard, oh god.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, and he grabs Mike’s arms again, nodding madly. “Fuck me so hard that it makes that loud skin slapping sound. I hate it when it’s them, when I have to listen-- I just want it to be me, so bad, getting fucked like that. By you.”

Mike moans and kisses him and then does what he asked, in increasingly unhinged stages, until they’re both soaked in sweat and moaning, and Jay forgets to even care what kind of sound their bodies are making, because he feels so good he can’t think, so good that his stomach clenches and he starts to fall over his edge just for being fucked hard right where he needs it, with Mike holding his hips up so the angle is perfect, so that Jay groans like a monster that’s emerging from a volcano when his orgasm hits, a sound he doesn’t even recognize tearing out of him. Then he’s just whimpering through the aftershocks, letting Mike hammer into him until he’s coming, too-- Much more quietly than Jay, like all Mikes. 

For Mike there’s a lot of shaking when he comes, now more than ever, and Jay wraps around him though he’s so hot, and though after he came Mike’s dick started to feel less euphoric, more like too much. He didn’t care then and doesn’t now, still not ready to disconnect. He just wants to rub his hot face in Mike’s damp hair forever while Mike breathes against him in trembling exhales, clinging. 

“Can I finally take these off?” Jay asks, easing Mike’s crooked, foggy, smudged-up glasses away from his face when he finally lifts his head, looking disoriented and emotional. 

“Do whatever you want,” Mike says. He blinks down at Jay when his glasses are set aside, near the lube. “I love you,” he says, like he’s signing a letter, with firm sincerity. 

“I love you, too,” Jay says, not sure why he’s surprised by how easy it is to say so. It’s true, he loves this Mike, and it’s different from how he loves the Jays. He smooths his hands down over Mike’s cheeks and squirms underneath him, whining a little as the sweltering heat and huge dick grow increasingly uncomfortable. Mike gets the idea, pecks him on the lips and slides out slow. 

Mike leaves the tent to turn down the heat and get some towels for cleanup. Jay is still warm when he’s gone but worms down under the blankets anyway, so that he’s cocooned when Mike returns. He takes a towel and pushes it down under the blankets to clean himself up, for some reason still not wanting Mike to watch this part. The amount of come that is leaking out of him is kind of unreal, and he feels sort of proud of this, as if his ass expertly milked every drop out of Mike. 

“Do you want a snack?” Mike asks. He’s attentive in a worried sort of way, as if he needs to do penance for what he just did to Jay’s ass. “Some water?”

“Not yet,” Jay says, reaching for him. 

Mike grins and gets under the mess of bed coverings with him, holds him close. Jay had envisioned them fucking three or four times before the others get back, but they end up just talking with the blankets pulled up to their ears. At moments they’re even whispering, though there is no one outside the tent to hear them. 

“Are you scared about having a job and all that?” Mike asks when Jay confides in him about what the original Jay said about him being the most responsible one, the Jay who will be allowed to try this job experiment first. 

“Mhmm, not really,” Jay says. “But it might be because I’m not really sure what to be scared about yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean-- I don’t know anything about the world, like. I guess I kinda do, but not firsthand. Except not to drink in bars because an old guy might poison your drink.” 

“I’d never let that happen to you,” Mike says, squeezing his hand under the blankets. 

“Okay,” Jay says, and he laughs off his impulse to tell Mike he can take care of himself. He can’t, probably, but he doesn’t want Mike to start acting like the other Mikes, like his bodyguard or something. “It’s just scary to think of going outside because we could get caught, you know?”

“Caught?”

“Being clones made with alien tech! Like, that’s the only thing I have bad dreams about. Me or the others getting taken back by the aliens or getting sent to prison on Earth for being clones.”

“Is it-- Illegal?”

“I think so-- Kinda? Original Jay and Mike might go to prison, anyway. And where would that leave the rest of us?” 

“I don’t think they’ll let that happen,” Mike says, but he looks worried. 

“Me either,” Jay says hurriedly, petting his side to calm him down. Since they turned down the heat and climbed under the blankets their feverish sex-driven body temperatures have dropped, and it feels perfect now, wrapped up and warm with Mike while the air outside their mound of blankets grows cooler. “Do you ever have bad dreams?” Jay asks. 

“Mhm, sometimes. I, uh. Sometimes I dream it’s you in that box in that old man’s basement, and I can’t get the lid off.”

“Aww. Yeah, that was real scary. Poor hot Jay. I don’t think he wants to admit how much it still bugs him. He clung to me for almost two days straight after it happened, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. I was jealous of him.”

“You were sort of clinging to me, too! From behind, if I recall.”

“Ha. Yeah, but you had your arms around him. But I loved that about you. That you were the one who he, like. Needed, or whatever. I could see why.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the best Jay, obviously.” 

Jay grins and hides his sputtering, embarrassed laughter against Mike’s chest. He smells so good that Jay’s dick starts to get hard while he rubs his face there, giddy, and that’s when they hear the voices in the hallway, and footsteps, then the key in the door.

“Oh god, already?” Mike says, sitting up on his elbow.

“It’s okay,” Jay says, whispering. He’s shocked, too, that their precious hours alone together in the apartment flew by in what felt like ten minutes. He drags one finger down between Mike’s pecs and gives him what he hopes is a seductive look. “We have the tent now. We can do it in here all night, if we want.” 

Mike grins. The others spill through the door as loudly as possible. 

“Hand me my glasses,” Mike says, whispering, and Jay gropes for them. 

“Hello, are you alive in there?” shrimp Jay says, approaching the tent while the others argue about who deserves the last pieces from a box of candy and how much it cost and why you should sneak candy in to the movie theater because it’s insane to pay snack counter prices, and why didn’t you think of that ahead of time then, _Jay_?

“We’re alive,” Jay says. “Don’t come in. We’re naked.”

“Yay!” shrimp Jay says. 

“Leave them alone,” original Jay says. He sounds exhausted, like this excursion took a lot out of him. “You guys okay?” he adds. 

“Yes,” nerd Mike says. “Please don’t talk to us when we’re in the tent.”

“Yeah,” Jay adds, beaming at him. “Pretend this is a sound-proof force field, please.”

“Oh god,” original Jay mutters. “Fine. But you can’t hide from chores in there. I’m starting dinner in ten minutes.” 

Jay has an idea. He gets dressed, pulling his t-shirt on while still sitting in the circle of Mike’s arms. His ass is still leaking a little, but not too bad now, and the weird newness of it makes him feel accomplished, like they all have one thing less to tease him for now. He kisses Mike, puts on his socks and boxers and jeans and climbs out of the tent, zipping it shut behind him. 

He heads into the kitchen to wash his hands. Original Jay is staring into the fridge as if it’s a soul sucking void, eyes blank. Shrimp Jay is shrieking with what sounds like glee in the sex bedroom, presumably being tackled to the bed by stud Mike in some semi-sexual way. Hot Jay is at the table, drinking a beer.

“Worth the calories?” Jay says, walking over to touch hot Jay’s hair. He tugs at a stray cowlick before smoothing it down for him. 

“It was a long day,” hot Jay says. He takes another slug from his beer and lifts his face to look Jay over in a pointed way. “Did glasses boy do right by you in that tent?” 

“Yes.” He leans down to say the rest directly into hot Jay’s ear, feeling bold. “I guess I wore him out because I think he’s asleep in there.” 

“Cute,” hot Jay says, and he smiles in a way that seems kind of sad. Jay tries to stroke his hair again but gets slapped away. “Cut it out, go groom your boyfriend.”

Jay rolls his eyes and goes over to lean against the original Jay’s back while he arranges ingredients on the counter.

“I guess you’re in a good mood,” original Jay says, not otherwise objecting to this display of affection. 

“Where’s big Mike?” Jay asks. 

“Seeing a friend of his about a night job. He wants to give it to stud Mike, if he can work something out. And speaking of jobs, they were advertising at the theater for a ticket taker position, so I applied. If I get a call from them, you can do the interview.”

“You’d trust me to do the interview?”

“That’s what I just said, so. Yes.”

“Here,” Jay says, easing his tired original away from the counter. “Go take a nap, okay? I’ll do all the cooking.”

Original Jay looks like he’s going to protest, then just nods and squeezes Jay’s arm appreciatively.

“Get the other Jays to help,” he says. 

“I will,” Jay says, though he plans to do it all or at least most of it himself. He feels invigorated, invincible, lucky, and he wants to use his powers for good. 

Original Jay disappears into his bedroom, and hot Jay describes the movie they saw at the theater while Jay cooks. Apparently all the clones were confused by it.

“I don’t think big Mike liked it either,” he says, leaning at Jay’s side at the counter and watching him do all the work. “But he wouldn’t admit it, because the original Jay loved it.”

As if summoned, big Mike comes through the apartment’s front door a few seconds later, red-cheeked and disheveled by the cold outside. From the kitchen window they can see the wind picking up out there, thrashing the trees around. 

“I’ve got good news,” big Mike says, coming over to peer at the pan Jay is stirring. “Where’s stud Mike?”

“Probably balls deep in the shrimp,” hot Jay says. “Tell him later. Go see your Jay, he seems depressed.” 

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Jay says. “He’s just worn out, he needs some extra care.”

“Is he in our bedroom?” big Mike asks, looking bereft and already moving in that direction. 

They both nod, and big Mike hurries away, shutting the bedroom door softly behind him like he doesn’t want to wake his sleeping Jay. 

“How was it to be out and about again?” Jay asks. 

“Eh,” hot Jay says. He quirks his lips a few times when Jay looks up at him. “Honestly. With them and all their chaos, it was more comedy than tragedy. How’d you like getting fucked, by the way?”

“Jesus!” Jay flushes and cranes his neck to look at the tent. It’s still zipped shut, Mike presumably still conked out inside. He looks back at hot Jay, who is grinning around the mouth of his beer bottle as he sips from it. “You assume I was the one on the bottom?” 

“Are you gonna pretend you weren’t? Why? Bottoming rules. You just let them do all the work and reap all the rewards.”

Jay opens his mouth to say that’s inaccurate, and starts laughing when he realizes it’s actually exactly right. Hot Jay grins and claps him on the back.

“See, you know what I’m talking about,” he says. “All Jays do.” 

They finish making dinner together, and hot Jay goes to fetch shrimp Jay and stud Mike while Jay returns to the tent to wake his Mike. He’s still out cold, his glasses resting on the pillow. He’s pulled his t-shirt on, but is otherwise naked when Jay slides into the warm pile of blankets beside him to pet him awake. Mike groans like he’s still worn out but smiles when Jay kisses his face. 

“You’re so warm,” Jay says. “If I wasn’t starving I’d stay in here with you. But dinner’s ready, if you want.”

“Yeah,” Mike says thickly, his eyes still closed. He clamps his hand on Jay’s hip under the blankets, sighs. “God,” he says when he blinks up at Jay. “I’m really happy.” 

“Aw. Me too.” 

“I was having this dream-- You know how they downloaded everything we know into our brains, pretty much?” 

“Uh, yeah?” Jay isn’t sure it worked the same for both of them, but that’s essentially right. 

“I dreamed that I was half machine, or alien, or something not human, and then you came and made me a real man.” 

“Oh, jesus.” Jay can’t help laughing, and feels a little bad about it when Mike peers up at him like he’d hoped that information would land differently. “Sorry, just sounds like you’re saying you had to stick your dick in me to uhh. Achieve maturity or something.” 

“It wasn’t maturity!” Mike sits up and puts his glasses on. “It was like, humanity. Like, love and empathy.” 

“Like you were Data and I’m your emotion chip?” 

“Smart ass,” Mike says, but then he grins like he doesn’t mind the comparison. 

They let the originals sleep through dinner, and for once there is peace among the clones, the conversation shifting amicably between the movie the others saw and the prospect of working jobs out in the real world. 

“But if it’s night shift, who’ll entertain me after dark?” shrimp Jay says when they’re speculating about what sort of work big Mike might have found for his stud clone. “And what about Star Trek viewing time?” he says, grabbing big Mike’s shoulder. “Why’ve they got to give you the night work?” 

“You can be nocturnal with me,” big Mike says. 

“Yeah, you can get a night job, too,” hot Jay says. “I’m sure there’s a huge market for barely legal strippers.” 

“I meant at the apartment,” big Mike says, glowering at him. “He doesn’t have to work.”

“But I want to,” shrimp Jay says, sounding uncertain. “Or maybe I could take some night classes.”

“That costs money,” nerd Mike says. “They need us to earn it, not spend more.”

Jay thinks about the interview for the ticket taker position at the theater and feels nervous. After dinner, he does research on movie theater work while the others do the dishes. The original Jay and big Mike emerge just as everything’s been put away. 

“You guys let us sleep too long,” Jay says, but he doesn’t look mad, or as tapped out as he did when they got home. 

“You needed it,” big Mike says, rubbing at the back of Jay’s neck. 

The originals eat out of their laps on the loveseat during Star Trek time, and the others spread out on the couch while Jay and nerd Mike cuddle up together in their unzipped tent, stretched out on their bellies just like Jay pictured. For the first time ever during Star Trek viewing time, Jay falls asleep during an episode, too cozy and tired to resist. He keeps drifting in and out to the sound of phaser fire and barked commands from Picard, feeling nerd Mike’s fingers scratching through his hair. 

“Was nerd Mike good at sex?” shrimp Jay asks when all the Jay clones are brushing their teeth together after Star Trek, which is some kind of unofficial ritual they’ve developed. 

“Yes,” Jay says, meeting hot Jay’s eyes in the mirror and not appreciating the way he smirks. 

“That’s cool,” shrimp Jay says. “Good for him.”

“Oh my god!” Jay says, not sure if he’s indignant or amused. When hot Jay starts laughing hard, he can’t help joining in.

“What?” shrimp Jay says, looking offended. “I’m being serious! I’m happy for them!”

“Shut up,” hot Jay says, still laughing. “Oh my god. You’re so obnoxious.” 

“Yeah? I’m obnoxious, huh? Okay, fine, then you can go sleep with some other Jay and Mike instead of me and mine then, how’s that?”

“I meant that as a compliment,” hot Jay says, rubbing shrimp Jay’s fuzzy head until he gets smacked away. 

Jay leaves them to work it out and climbs gladly into the tent, where Mike is waiting for him with a sleepy smile. He zips the flap up behind him, squirms out of his jeans and hurries into the blankets with Mike. 

“Got them warm for you,” Mike says, arranging the blankets around Jay’s shoulder. “And I brushed my teeth, earlier.”

“I can tell,” Jay says, kissing his minty mouth. “Did you think I was worried you hadn’t?”

“No, just, you know. It was so kinda, weirdly good. Getting ready for bed, uh. Knowing you’d be in bed with me.” 

Jay nods in understanding and ducks down under the blankets, rolling over so Mike will spoon up behind him. There’s so much room, compared to the couch, and it feels so different. 

“Let’s fuck in the middle of the night,” Jay says when Mike mouths at his neck. “I can’t get hard while I’m listening to hot Jay and shrimp Jay have hate sex.” 

“Aw, do they hate each other?”

“Just sometimes.”

“Poor stud Mike. I think about how tired his dick must get.”

Jay laughs so hard that the tent shakes a little. Mike buries his laughter against Jay’s shoulder, holding on tight. Jay doesn’t know how he ever lived without this, and he’s less afraid of losing it than he was even a few days ago, because he knows what Mike means about feeling fully human now, like they just made each other real, and though he doesn’t know much about being in the real world yet, he feels like that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t fade away. 

*


	2. Chapter 2

He tries not to think of himself as stud Mike, because that’s arrogant and also kind of degrading, but it’s what they call him, and isn’t the worst clone designation. At least he’s not as bad off as chubby Jay, who poutily pretends not to know that’s his unofficial nickname. In general stud Mike probably ruminates on his name and his place in the Mike Hierarchy too often. Shrimp Jay seems unbothered by his nickname and for that matter by most everything, which is one reason stud Mike is in love with him, despite his fears that the feeling isn’t exactly mutual. 

Shrimp Jay’s fluffy blond head is resting on stud Mike’s chest, early in the morning on a frigid but pretty Sunday at the start of winter. Hot Jay left the bed already, probably to go work out in the living room before everyone else woke up. Shrimp Jay has only recently awakened but is already stroking his fingers down over Mike’s hairy chest and belly, down toward his dick. 

“Can I ask you something?” shrimp Jay says, squirming against Mike’s side under the blankets. He’s naked and half hard but for once doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to fuck.

“Of course,” Mike says. 

His arm is hugged around Jay’s skinny back. He’s cozy and content to just be curled up with him in their warm bed, feels ready to talk about anything. They don’t talk enough about real shit, maybe because hot Jay is always hanging around, teasing them and being irreverent. The other Mikes and Jays tend to get more privacy as twosomes, even if it’s just in a tent, in the case of nerd Mike and chubby Jay. 

Shrimp Jay sits up on his elbow so he can look down into stud Mike’s face. His sweet green eyes are still a little hazy from sleep but he looks serious, like something heavy is on his mind. Mike swallows and braces himself to hear it. 

“Do you think Odo wants to fuck Quark?” Jay asks. 

“What-- On Deep Space Nine?” 

Jay smirks like that was a stupid question, because it was. The whole gang recently started watching DS9 together, having finished TNG a few weeks earlier. 

“I mean, it kinda seems like he does,” Jay says, resting his head on Mike’s chest again. “Don’t you think? I was gonna say so during that episode we watched last night, but I knew everybody would make fun of me. But I don’t think I’m wrong!”

“I guess I can see it,” Mike says.

“It just kinda feels like the whole show so far is about their sexual tension more than anything else.”

“Uh--” 

“But no spoilers, okay?”

“Okay, baby.” 

Shrimp Jay sits up on his elbow again and beams down at Mike, showing his teeth. He gets off on being called baby, unlike the other Jays. Mike can hardly handle how much he’s come to love him. His chest aches from it when they’re alone together like this. When all this started it was just about their sexual chemistry, almost like their cynical inside joke where the punchline was fucking, but now he knows all Mikes have roughly the same physical chemistry with all Jays, and he worries that shrimp Jay is only settling for the second biggest Mike because the original one is taken. Stud Mike had initially lusted after hot Jay most of all, but now he can’t get rid of the guy long enough to cuddle his shrimp properly, most days. 

“Can I kiss you with my morning breath?” shrimp Jay asks. 

“I’ll allow it,” Mike says. As if he’s ever said no. He might be demented, but his Jay always tastes good to him, first thing in the morning or not. 

Shrimp Jay’s mouth is hot and eager against Mike’s lips and then on his throat, chest, and belly. He gives Mike a few soft bites there and giggles under the blankets when Mike grunts. 

“I love it when you wake up ready for me,” Jay says, gripping Mike’s erection and peeking out from under the blankets to give him a hungry look that’s sort of dark, too. 

Mike groans. Shrimp Jay loves sucking dick and getting fucked but also seems to be the only true top among the Jays. He gives orders with the expectation they’ll be followed and is better at disarming dirty talk than the others give him credit for. Hot Jay calls him the littlest power bottom as a joke, but there seems to be some genuine admiration in it, too. 

“Is this what I’d be like if I was born without shame?” the original Jay sometimes says, with exasperation but also fondness and maybe even envy. 

Mike sighs and pushes his fingers through Jay’s soft hair as he swallows around Mike’s cock. He can’t take Mike’s whole dick in his mouth but gets pretty close, gagging on it. His enthusiasm is infectious and at this point almost everything he does makes Mike hard. Even the way he hunches over his phone with his knees pulled up toward his chest and spread just enough for him to hold the phone between them, with the point of his little pink tongue sticking out between his lips while he concentrates on whatever he’s reading from the screen. They all make fun of shrimp Jay for being a sex fiend, but stud Mike is the same, or worse. Sometimes he has to leave the room to beat off when, even in this household, it would be inappropriate to suddenly have a boner for his shrimp.

Waking up to a blow job that seems to come from the heart is one of the great joys of his weird ass life, and he actually prefers it when it’s just shrimp Jay rousing him like this, though of course it feels good to have two Jays lapping at him, too. He just feels a little outmatched and overly vulnerable when it’s the two of them pouncing on him at once. When it’s only his little shrimp here in bed with him it’s more like being cared for, even protected in some kinda way. 

Otherwise it can be a bit like he’s being brought to orgasm by piranhas who are swarming him. It’s a mind-twisting level of pleasure that leaves him dizzy and drained, more intense than intimate, and it’s good, nothing he’s ever tempted to refuse, but the intimate stuff is what he craves most of all. 

“You’re gonna finish me off,” Mike warns, scratching his fingers through Jay’s hair when he’s feeling not quite close, but close enough to ask for the other kind of intimacy he loves. 

“Not yet!” shrimp Jay says-- Or orders, Mike thinks, grinning at him when he pops back out from beneath the blankets again. It’s chilly enough in the mornings now that he leaves them draped over his head during BJs, cave-like. Mike misses the sight of him going to town with his hot little mouth stretched open wide, but he doesn’t want his skinny shrimp feeling cold. 

“Lock the door,” Mike says when Jay springs out of bed to find the lube, which rolled onto the floor at some point the night before.

“Ugh, no,” Jay says, still on his hands and knees on the floor, rooting around under the bed. “If I lock it hottie’ll just be obnoxious and bang on it until we let him in. I don’t care if he comes back before we-- Do you?” He lifts his face above the edge of the mattress to give Mike a look of confused concern that makes his heart heavy.

Mike shakes his head. He doesn’t strictly mind, just wants to have some alone time with the Jay he loves, but. It doesn’t really matter, his shrimp is right. 

“Found it!” Jay says, hoisting the lube and showing Mike his adorable buck-toothed grin.

“Good boy,” Mike says. He throws the blankets aside and spreads his legs to show off his spit-shiny cock. “Come get your reward.”

Shrimp Jay snickers, maybe at Mike’s attempt to sound commanding. He’s good at it sometimes, but usually more with the original Jay or hot Jay, maybe because he’s not slavishly in love with either of them. He’s never laid a hand on chubby Jay, who clings to nerd Mike like lichen and no longer even shows interest in the original Mike. 

Not that stud Mike is jealous about that or anything. It’s just something he’s noticed. 

He stays on his back while shrimp Jay takes charge as usual: getting Mike’s cock slicked up, spreading the lube through his ass crack and then sinking down with a low moan that sounds like relief, like he’s been hurting without this. Mike makes an answering noise of pleasure as he’s steadily enveloped in tight heat. He pulls shrimp Jay down for a sloppy kiss, soothing his hands over Jay’s skinny back. Jay is already bouncing on him, making soft noises of contentment that tug at Mike’s heart and get his hips twitching upward for more. 

Fucking in the morning is stud Mike’s favorite kind, especially when hot Jay is off tending to his workout regimen and they have the bed to themselves, which is most mornings lately. It’s dreamy, quieter than the sex they have at night, almost secret, or as secret as anything can ever be in this apartment. 

At least until hot Jay barges in, which of course he does right when Mike feels close to coming, shrimp Jay still writhing ecstatically above him like he doesn’t notice the intruder. 

“Does your insatiable ass ever get tired?” hot Jay asks. He at least shuts the door behind him. He’s sweaty from his living room workout, which stud Mike has done with him before. It’s pretty tough, lots of squats and lifting. 

“Unnh,” shrimp Jay says in answer, tipping forward to brace his hands on Mike’s chest. He turns to look at hot Jay, his ass still pumping in little twitches on Mike’s cock. “Come here or get out, I don’t need your fuckin’ commentary.” 

Mike wants to say, baby, nah, don’t invite him, but he just lies there with his dick throbbing inside his true love and watches as hot Jay strips his damp work out shirt off and crawls over toward them. 

“Are you cold?” hot Jay asks, wrapping around shrimp Jay where he’s got the comforter draped over his shoulders. It’s covering most of Mike, offering him some semblance of privacy. 

“No,” shrimp Jay says, and he lets hot Jay peel the comforter away so they’re chest to back, both of them sweaty for different reasons. Mike watches and withholds a whimper. They look hot together, always do, especially when they’re both staring down at his face in different stages of lust blown expectation. Hot Jay gets horny after his workouts, sometimes. Apparently this is one of those times. Mike groans along with shrimp Jay when hot Jay reaches around to jack shrimp Jay’s dick a few times before squeezing hard around the base. Shrimp Jay yelps and goes tense all over. 

“Don’t hurt him,” Mike says.

Hot Jay scoffs. Shrimp Jay giggles and tries to move his hips, but hot Jay is sort of holding him in place now. He likes this, to come in casually and start calling the shots for both of them. Mike likes it, too, most of the time. 

“I won’t hurt him,” hot Jay says, nuzzling at shrimp Jay’s flushed cheek. “But he’s not allowed to come yet. Are you?” he asks, muttering this close to shrimp Jay’s ear and nudging him with his nose. 

“Nnnh,” shrimp Jay says, trying to move. He whines when hot Jay holds him still. “I was close.” 

“So what? You need to learn some control. I’ll help.” 

“What about Mike?” shrimp Jay asks, reaching down to rub his hands through Mike’s chest hair. “Can he?”

“Sure, but he can’t pull out until you come, and you can’t come till I say so.” 

Mike grunts his consent when hot Jay meet his eyes, though he’d really rather pull out of his shrimp and fuck hot Jay’s smug ass until he’s crying, then return to the business that was at hand before he popped in here like he owns the place. But he probably won’t last much longer anyway, and is still sated enough from a good night’s sleep that it feels good to just lie on his back and watch the show while shrimp Jay twitches and whimpers on his cock. 

“You can fuck yourself on him for ten seconds,” hot Jay says, murmuring this into shrimp Jay’s ear like it’s supposed to be a secret. “But you can’t come. I’ll count.”

Shrimp Jay makes a tiny heartbreak noise and nods. Mike grabs his skinny hips and squeezes, wants eye contact. Hot Jay starts counting and shrimp Jay again bounces on Mike’s dick, measuredly now, like he’s afraid of making it feel too good. He has his head thrown back onto hot Jay’s shoulder and his eyes are closed. Hot Jay rubs his hands over shrimp Jay’s ribs while his narrow chest heaves, fingers soothing over his skin like praise or approval. Mike is turned on as fuck, again close to coming, but also a little bereft. 

Tonight, he thinks, narrowing his eyes when hot Jay gives him a wicked smirk. Later, when Mike is more energetic, he’ll fuck the living hell out of hot Jay. He’ll make him suck shrimp Jay off while he takes it, too. 

He can’t really be mad at hot Jay, because the way shrimp Jay starts to shake and curse and beg is fucking incredible, both to watch and to feel on his dick, and if hot Jay would just let shrimpy move a little bit more, or longer, Mike would come so hard. He’s right on the edge, too, inside him, and hot Jay knows it and is getting off on it, rubbing his cock against the modest swell of shrimp Jay’s ass cheeks, still wearing the pair of little shorts he puts on when he works out. He gets off on how good he looks in those shorts, they all know it, and he wears them in bed pretty often, likes it when stud Mike makes him come inside them. 

“I need it, please!” shrimp Jay says, almost crying after maybe just five minutes of this routine. To Mike it feels far longer, too. “Jayy, please, nnh, it’s too-- Please, please--”

“Shh, you can go for another minute or two.”

“I can’t! Ah, no, please--”

“Let him,” Mike says, locking eyes with hot Jay. Shrimp Jay’s dick looks almost purple with how overfull he is, the base held tight in hot Jay’s unforgiving grip. His throat is all pink and his teeth are grit, his ass closed up like a vice around Mike’s throbbing, also overfull cock. 

“Mike wants me to let you,” hot Jay says, dragging his fingertips over shrimp Jay’s heaving chest and pausing to tug on the wispy hairs between his pecs. “What do you think? Do you deserve to come on that fat cock? Have you been good enough?”

“Fucker,” is all shrimp Jay says in response, sobbing.

“That sounds like a no to me. Mike, rub his little baby tits. Maybe he can come just from that.”

Mike reaches up without really thinking about it and smashes his palms in against shrimp Jay’s nipples, which go from puffy to rock hard in an instant. Shrimp Jay makes a high pitched keening sound and bucks with his whole body, trying to work himself up and down on Mike’s dick and not getting far. Hot Jay is stronger than he looks, and shrimp Jay is easy to hold in place. 

“Aw,” hot Jay says when actual tears streak down from the corners of shrimp Jay’s pinched shut eyes. Hot Jay licks one up for him, then starts slowly jacking his cock again, keeping his grip light while Mike continues pulling at shrimp Jay’s nipples and rubbing his pecs. “You’re shaking so hard. Want to come now?”

Shrimp Jay reaches down and closes his hand around hot Jay’s on his cock, makes it move faster. 

“Poor baby,” hot Jay says, mocking. His voice is hoarse and he’s moving his hips urgently against shrimp Jay’s ass, probably close himself. “You can bounce, too, go ahead, fuck yourself on that big cock, get what you need.”

Shrimp Jay is too gone to do much more than wiggle his hips feebly. Mike takes over with a grunt and braces his feet on the mattress for leverage before slamming up into him. Shrimp Jay lets out a wail that will probably get them more unwanted attention from the lately suspicious neighbors and comes so hard that some lands on Mike’s throat. Hot Jay moans in approval and pumps him through it, breathing hard against his shoulder. Mike sits up and tips them both onto their backs, fucking into shrimp Jay until he finishes inside him with a groan, setting hot Jay off from the friction of shrimp Jay’s body jerking back and forth on top of him with the force of Mike’s thrusts.

“Oh holy fuck,” hot Jay says when he’s coming down from it, his hands soothing through Mike’s hair appreciatively. Mike is collapsed onto his side, hugging them both against him tiredly, his face buried in shrimp Jay’s hair. 

“You okay?” he asks, pulling back to check shrimp Jay’s face. 

Shrimp Jay laughs low in his chest and nods. He whinnies softly when Mike slides out of him and lets Mike hoist him back in the direction of the pillows, where they started. Hot Jay sits up and rubs his palm over his eyes, his dick still twitching with aftershocks against the front of his creamed-up little shorts.

“Anyway,” hot Jay says, blinking at them as they settle together, Mike’s arms closing around shrimp Jay’s still-shivery body. “Good morning.”

Mike gets out of bed to fetch a towel, not wanting to have to wash the sheets yet again. Original Jay has warned them about the astronomical water bills that will put them all in the poor house if they don’t cut back. When he returns to the bed he scowls at the sight of hot Jay curled up in the warm spot at shrimp Jay’s side, stealing Mike’s place. 

“Let me put this under you,” Mike says, walking over on his knees and nudging shrimp Jay so that his ass rests on the towel. “I came a lot,” he says, feeling awkward, like he has to explain himself. 

Hot Jay snorts and pulls shrimp Jay in against his chest. Shrimp Jay is laughing a little, too, which hurts. Is he laughing at Mike? Is it really so stupid to think about the integrity of the sheets, and wanting to help this household stay afloat financially in whatever ways they can?

“Are you working tonight?” hot Jay asks, sliding his fingers through shrimp Jay’s hair in a way that looks possessive, from Mike’s point of view. 

“Yeah,” Mike says. “So I should sleep some more. But I’m gonna eat breakfast first.” 

He waits for shrimp Jay to say he’ll join him, but he’s still all wrecked after his wall-shaking orgasm, and then big Mike is knocking on the door. He pokes his head in without waiting for an answer, looking pissed off.

“You guys need to learn how to keep it down,” he says. “For fuck’s sake. We’ve gotten three neighbors complaining to the landlord in the past month. Jay is fucking mortified. Every time one of you screams like that, they think it’s him.” 

“You say ‘Jay’ as if there’s only one of us,” hot Jay says, unimpressed. “And I don’t know why you’re looking at me, I’m not the one who can’t control himself. Your Jay is even louder than this one, by the way,” he says, patting shrimp Jay’s ass. 

“Sorry,” shrimp Jay says, looking and sounding half asleep. “Tell them to fuck me less good, I guess.” 

Big Mike turns his frown on stud Mike, as if he’s letting Mike-kind down by not keeping his Jays under control. Stud Mike glowers back at him, wanting to say it’s not so easy when there’s two of them, and that big Mike wouldn’t understand. He says nothing, because he’s heard the stories about Mike handling all four Jays himself, before he made more Mikes to share the load.

For stud Mike, the other Mikes seem to exist mostly to make him feel inadequate. He stares at the Jays in his bed when big Mike has gone, envying how much they seem to love each other. Before he leaves to take a shower, hot Jay gives shrimp Jay a kiss on the mouth, tongue and all. Shrimp Jay kisses him back with his eyes closed, making a soft sound of appreciation that snags at Mike’s heart. The other Mikes get to be as possessive as they please, with their own bedroom and tent, respectively. Hot Jay sleeps with the originals sometimes, but usually he’s here. 

“Isn’t it weird to kiss another Jay on the mouth like that?” Mike says when hot Jay is gone, taking his shower.

“Hmm?” shrimp Jay lifts his head from the pillow and shifts in Mike’s arms, seems to have actually drifted into real sleep post-fuck. “I thought you liked seeing us kiss.” He plays with one of Mike’s nipples under the blankets and grins, coy. “Thought you found it hot.”

“I did-- I do-- It is! Just. I can’t imagine kissing another Mike like that.” 

“How come? It’s not like we’re brothers. We didn’t grow up together. We just look the same.” 

Shrimp Jay sits up and gives Mike a look like he’s a little offended by the question, now that he thinks about it. Mike flushes with heartache, hates to disappoint him. He wants to backtrack. 

“How about some breakfast?” he says, feeling lame. 

“Sure!” 

Shrimp Jay brightens instantly, as if all is forgiven. Mike feels bad for trying to suggest his affection for the other Jays could be a bad thing. He’s heard from nerd Mike what the situation in space was, before the originals showed up to rescue the Jay clones. Shrimp Jay has never talked about it, at least not to stud Mike, but he’s the only one in the household who’s experienced what it’s like to be truly alone and to not know if anyone would ever come to sit through the empty hours with him, hold him, keep him warm and give him a sense that he wasn’t the only human in the universe. Mike isn’t sure how long his period of isolation lasted. Even chubby Jay doesn’t know that, and shrimp Jay probably doesn’t know either, having had no way to measure time. 

After breakfast they dress for the cold and go for a walk together. It’s Mike’s favorite part of his day aside from sex, the thrill of freely strolling around in the outside world giving him a different but also soaring pleasure. It’s freezing outside, snowless so far but biting when the wind blows against them, just three days from Thanksgiving, when Mike will have a much-needed two day break from his job as a night watchman at an office building downtown. It’s easy, and he hates to complain, likes the feeling of contributing, but sitting there browsing mindlessly on his phone and getting sexts from shrimp Jay when he can’t sleep is a kind of torture that makes him think, guiltily, of shrimp Jay’s time alone in space. He knows he shouldn’t feel so sorry for himself, just can’t help feeling like the hours pass cruelly slow even while he tells himself to get over it. 

“Jay told his family he can’t come home this year for Thanksgiving,” shrimp Jay says, his gloved hand clasped in Mike’s as they walk their usual route through Jay’s neighborhood, which abuts the industrial area where the VCR repair shop is located. “Isn’t that kinda sad?” shrimp Jay prompts, swinging their arms together. “He says he doesn’t care, that they all make him feel like a weirdo anyway, but I found a bunch of old pictures of him and his sisters together, on the desktop computer, and why would he keep those if he didn’t love them? Ya know?”

“He could go,” stud Mike says. “And take big Mike. The rest of us would be fine without them for a few days.” He imagines hot Jay claiming their bed for himself and leaving the sex bedroom to him and shrimp Jay.

“That’s what I said! But he says no, he’s staying, he’s making a turkey for the clones. I dunno, maybe he really doesn’t want to see his family. Chubby Jay says we’re his family now. I guess that’s true. Miiike, you’re so quiet! What’s wrong?”

“I’m always quiet,” Mike says, stopping to look down at him. Jay’s cheeks are pink from the cold, and he looks worried, squirting up at Mike. “What? I am.” 

“I know.” Shrimp Jay shrugs and keeps walking, tugging Mike along by the arm. “Do I talk too much? Hot Jay says I do.”

“Hot Jay is wrong about almost everything. I love your voice. If anything, I want you to talk more.”

Shrimp Jay snickers and wrinkles his nose like that’s corny, but also resumes his rambling narration about the original Jay’s past and psyche. 

Mike is exhausted by the time they get back to the apartment, though pleasantly. He got home at five o’clock in the morning after his last shift, and shrimp Jay had only been able to wait three hours before waking him up for that fuck that turned into an orchestrated threesome with hot Jay as the conductor. He takes a hot shower with shrimp Jay to wash off the cold, lets shrimp Jay suck his dick, and is asleep on his feet by the time he’s falling into the sex bed again. 

He wakes up intermittently throughout the day, either because of noise from the hallway or because shrimp Jay is climbing into bed with him, to cuddle or read from his phone while spooned up against him, waking Mike again when he gets bored and leaves. Dropping back to sleep is easy until about four o’clock in the afternoon, when he gives up and rolls onto his back with a moan. Hot Jay is at the desktop computer, hurriedly closing some window. Mike is pretty sure he heard hot Jay talking just before he woke, and he’s also ripping a pair of headphones that are plugged into the computer’s speakers out of his ears when he turns to give stud Mike a rude look, like Mike’s attempt to sleep is intruding on his schedule. 

“I hope you’re not chatting with random weirdos again,” Mike says, still lying on his back. He has to be at work in three hours. 

“Stay out of it,” hot Jay snaps. “Obviously I learned my lesson and know how to take care of myself now.”

Mike just groans, wondering if he should tell the originals about this. Hot Jay leaves the room in a huff and leaves the door open. Somebody is watching something loud as fuck out on the living room TV, explosions reverberating through Jay’s top of the line sound system. 

“Hey,” nerd Mike says, popping into the doorway while stud Mike is still trying to muster the energy to sit upright. “Can you drive my Jay to work before your shift? There’s a midnight screening thing tonight and he’s on shift from eight to two. And then maybe you could drive him home during your dinner break?”

Stud Mike groans again, already knowing he’ll do it. Everyone in the household will be mad at him if he rudely hogs the car and makes chubby Jay take the bus to work and then walk home in the freezing cold. It’s not even a request, really, more like an assignment. All the Mikes know how to drive, as it got insta-downloaded with the rest of the motor functions that the original Mike is capable of, but the Jays are still clueless and taking group driving lessons from original Jay during the weekends. 

“Hello?” nerd Mike says, rapping hard on the doorframe. “Did you hear me? Are you awake?”

“Yes, I heard you. Yes, I’m awake. Yes, whatever you say, fine.”

“What’s your problem?” nerd Mike asks.

“Nothing. I’m fucking tired. You don’t know what it’s like to work for a living.”

“It’s not like I’m not trying to get a job!” nerd Mike says, immediately indignant. Usually they get along fine, but the job thing has been a sticking point between them recently. “Mike and me are both busting our asses trying to find something.”

“I know,” stud Mike says, dragging himself up into a seated position. “That wasn’t a judgment. Just a statement of fact.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come eat dinner, we’re having it early tonight since you’re both on shift.”

Stud Mike puts on a clean undershirt and the slacks that are part of his security guard uniform. He drags himself out to the kitchen and looks mournfully at the dish of tonight’s health food that’s being passed around at the table. If he were paid in cash, he’d go get fast food on his dinner breaks at work, but his direct deposits go right into the original Mike’s bank account, and the original Jay packs him a healthy meal for every shift. It’s often just leftovers from the group meal, in this case a big pot of roasted brussel sprouts with a side of baked lemon chicken. Mike would kill for a few slices of pizza or a burger, but those are special weekend treats, and despite having two more incomes the occasion for treats has been dwindling recently as Jay attempts to save up for a second car. People’s shifts have begun to overlap, and walking or waiting for the bus is truly miserable as winter really settles in. 

“Still sleepy?” shrimp Jay asks during the meal, squeezing stud Mike’s leg under the table.

“A little, yeah.”

“Sorry I woke you up so early this morning.”

“It’s okay, baby.” 

Mike pats shrimp Jay’s hand under the table and shovels more brussel sprouts into his mouth, wondering if other Mikes ever feel as shitty as he sometimes does, without real reason. He smiles over at shrimp Jay and tells himself to cheer up, that he has a lot of great stuff in his life and should be grateful he’s not stuffed into a windowless cell on some spaceship. 

The ride to the movie theater to drop chubby Jay off is awkward, or maybe Mike is just reading too much into chubby Jay’s silence over in the passenger seat. He’s always felt like chubby Jay dislikes him. He told nerd Mike this once and got accused of being overly sensitive. 

“How’re you liking the theater job?” Mike asks when they’re stopped at a red light and the quiet in the car seems suffocating. 

“Fine,” chubby Jay says. Under his big winter coat he’s dressed in the dorky white collar shirt, black bowtie and black vest that hot Jay gives him hell for. “How about your job?” 

“It’s fine. Hey. Is hot Jay still chatting up dudes online?”

“Ugh.” Chubby Jay rolls his eyes. Mike tries not to feel insulted. “Just one. It’s a long story.”

“Okay. And you’re not worried about that?”

“Not especially.” Chubby Jay gives Mike a look like he wouldn’t understand, like it’s a _Jay thing_. “Why?”

“Why? Uhh, because of his history of reckless behavior?”

“Oh my god. You saw what he went through. He can barely leave the house with the rest of us without having a panic attack. He won’t be going anywhere alone anytime soon. Calm down.” 

“I’m fucking calm. Does the original Jay know about this one person he’s still chatting with?”

“No, and you’re not going to tell him!” 

Chubby Jay can get kind of scary when he’s mad. Mike gives him a scary look right back. 

“We have to look out for each other, too, you know,” chubby Jay snaps. “The clones, I mean, as a group. I know the originals mean well, but they don’t always know best.” 

“No shit,” Mike says. “I’m literally trying to look out for him, by asking you all this. But treat me like I’m a clueless asshole, I guess, that’s fine.”

Chubby Jay wilts a little, and he’s looking regretful as they pull up to the movie theater, which is glowing bright against the cold night and streaming with bundled up people who are coming and going. It looks like such a fun place to work, and chubby Jay gets free popcorn and soda all night long. Mike sits in his sterile security bunker with his lukewarm leftovers from dinner, watching monitors where nothing ever happens, and feels jealous as fuck, sometimes. 

“Sorry,” chubby Jay says, mumbling. “I know you’re only asking because you care. But hot Jay is-- Going through some things, and having the attention of this friend of his online is helping, I think. The guy lives out in California and he’s a huge dweeb. He’s harmless.”

“I would have thought that feeble old man was harmless, too, but okay.” 

Chubby Jay’s expression gets mean again, and he throws open the car door.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says, tightly. “Are you taking me home at two?”

“That’s the plan. Hey. Can you, uhh. Bring me some popcorn when I pick you up?”

“I’d get in huge trouble if they caught me taking food from the theater. We’re allowed to munch on it during our shift but that’s it.”

“Ah. Okay. Bye.”

Chubby Jay makes an exasperated noise, like stud Mike couldn’t possibly understand the movie theater pressure he’s under, and climbs out of the car. 

There’s an hour before Mike’s shift. He drives around until he starts to feel sleepy, the car’s air conditioning blasting heat against his face in a way that’s making him think of the blankets on his bed and shrimp Jay’s greedy little hands gathering him in close. He feels heavy-hearted and like everybody has it better than him. Even chubby Jay, who they used to all feel sorry for. Mike should have said something cutting like, ‘enjoy your popcorn, asshole,’ but chubby Jay probably would have taken it as a dig about his weight and cried to nerd Mike, who would embarrass himself by trying to fight stud Mike about it when they got home. Then big Mike would act like stud Mike was the asshole for defending himself against nerd Mike’s puny fists.

Just thinking about it makes him tired, so it’s probably best he let chubby Jay off the hook for giving him needless attitude after he drove the ingrate to work and had the nerve to express concern over hot Jay’s online antics. 

He parks outside the building where he works and listens to the radio in the car until it’s time for his shift. The cold outside the car stings hard. He needs a better coat, should have borrowed big Mike’s good one. He pulls the one he’s wearing around himself, lifts his shoulders and hurries inside to relieve his co-worker, a dour middle-aged man who is always quick to bolt out of the security booth when his shift is done. 

Alone again, Mike looks down at his phone. He’s five minutes early. The brussel sprouts in the tupperware that he stashed in the mini fridge under the security desk stink to high heaven. On the monitors, the usual nothing is happening, nobody wanting to be out in the closed-down financial district at night when it’s this cold out. 

He wishes he could browse the internet on the security station’s desktop computer, because scrolling on his phone hurts his eyes and his neck, but the old man warned him that the company tracks every website you go to and will fire your ass for not paying attention to the monitors if they detect so much as five minutes spent on a news site, and big Mike warned him when he took this job that this is _his_ reputation on the line, so stud Mike had better not fuck this up or risk ruining big Mike’s entire life and the lives of everyone in their household therefore. So he scrolls on his phone until his eyelids get heavy and a text from shrimp Jay comes through around ten o’clock to perk him up. 

Only it’s also kind of an annoying text, because shrimp Jay is in bed with hot Jay wrapped around him from behind, and the text says ‘miss u,’ but they’re both smiling like they’re cozy and content there without him. 

Hmph. He doesn’t reply for ten minutes, then loses his resolve to be in a funk about this and sends back:

_I miss you too. Chubby Jay was a bitch to me in the car_

When shrimp Jay doesn’t immediately respond, Mike assumes it’s because he’s fooling around with hot Jay or watching something on the desktop monitor, having some kind of good time without him. 

Five minutes later a reply arrives, and Mike forgives everything, cupping the phone in his palms and bringing it close to his face like it’s his only source of light and heat. 

_oh no what was he doing that for ??_

Mike considers how to reply. He can’t tell the truth, or hot Jay will know that he’s worried about him and will have some kind of resulting shitfit that Mike doesn’t want to deal with.

 _Just in general_ , he sends. _But its ok_

 _tell him I will kick his ass if he is not nice to you! god!_

Mike grins down at this message, and it carries him through to his break at two in the morning, which he has to use entirely to go fetch chubby Jay and bring him back to the apartment, then driving back downtown for the next three hours of his shift. The last three hours crawl by as usual without incident, each minute that passes seeming to go more slowly than then last, until finally he’s within three minutes of clocking out and his relief arrives. 

“You look like you had a rough one, man,” the young woman who takes the next shift says as she settles in and Mike collects his stinky Tupperware. 

“No, it was easy. Just boring.”

“Do what I do,” she says, pulling a slim laptop from her bag. “Work on a novel to pass the time.”

Mike grunts. He does like the idea of using these hours to write Star Trek fanfiction, which so far he’s only written in secret during the few hours he gets with the laptop at the apartment. He’s only shared his writings with shrimp Jay, who loves them and encourages him to make his stories more erotic. The idea of having the laptop in his possession from nine at night to five in the morning during his shift doesn’t seem too outlandish. Nerd Mike and chubby Jay like to use it at night in their tent, but tough shit if they don’t get what they want for once, and with chubby Jay taking shifts three or four nights a week at the theater, maybe nerd Mike would be willing to throw him this bone and hand the laptop over. 

The sunrise is just starting by the time he makes it home. He’s exhausted, dragging himself up the stairs to Jay’s apartment. Just two more shifts until Thanksgiving, he thinks, unlocking the door while the unfriendly old man from down the hall leers at him. 

“Amazing you can make such a ruckus all night long and also be away!” the old man shouts. 

“Huh?” Mike says, too tired for this.

The old man answers by huffing angrily and ducking into his apartment as if alarmed that he got Mike’s attention while he’s in his security guard uniform and feeling surly. He slams the door behind him, and Mike can hear locks clicking.

He writes the encounter off at first, but then thinks: what ruckus? The tent is zipped up as the makes his way through the living room, and those two are more whispery than loud. Original Jay can get loud, but he’d been drooping when stud Mike left for his shift, and has been looking as needful of the upcoming holiday break as Mike feels. He didn’t seem up for wild, loud sex, even with big Mike. 

That leaves shrimp Jay and hot Jay, who are curled up together under the blankets when Mike walks in and starts pulling off his uniform. Shrimp Jay was turned on by it to a ridiculous degree when Mike first got this job; for a week almost all the sex they had involved Mike wearing this thing, which he doesn’t love because it’s a heavy polyester fabric and smells like work. He’d been into it just for how crazy shrimp Jay got for the sight of him wearing it, but he was relieved when the novelty wore off and shrimp Jay started preferring him naked again. 

He’s shivering when he’s stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, and he lifts the blankets to find shrimp Jay curled up in hot Jay’s arms, his face buried against hot Jay’s bare chest. Shrimp Jay is naked as usual. He claims he’d sleep that way even if he wasn’t after sex. Mike slides under the blankets and curls up behind him. He can’t really hold shrimp Jay without holding hot Jay, too, and hot Jay is the one who wakes up as Mike’s big arm settles over them. 

“Your hand is freezing,” he complains, shifting away.

“Tough shit. Go sleep with a couple who’ve been warm in bed together all night if you don’t want cold hands.” 

“A couple,” hot Jay says, grumbling this out as if it’s ridiculous. He sighs and rolls over so that shrimp Jay will spoon him. Shrimp Jay moves with instinct, still asleep, squirming in against his clone’s back like he belongs there. 

Mike lies awake, fuming about a number of things, though he’s tired as fuck and just wants to sleep for days. He breathes in the sweet, slightly dirty scent at the back of shrimp Jay’s head and tries to force himself to deflate. He’s glad that he’s the one who goes out and works. If it was shrimp Jay venturing out into the world alone Mike would be a fucking wreck the entire time, worried about what might happen to him. He curls himself around shrimp Jay’s back as close as he can and huffs into his hair when hot Jay tugs at his hand and tucks it under the pillow they’re all sharing, either to get the coldness away from himself or to warm Mike up. Possibly it’s both.

He wakes up alone and gropes for his phone to see they’ve let him sleep past noon. Somebody even pulled the heavy curtains over the room’s single window so it would stay dark. Mike rolls onto his back and listens for sounds from the apartment. He can hear hot Jay doing jumping jacks or something out in the living room, and the apartment’s old pipes creaking because somebody is running the kitchen faucet while someone else takes a shower. The sheets smell like sex and need a wash. He feels content, better than yesterday, and grins at hot Jay when he catches him being thoughtful as he creeps quietly into the room post-workout. 

“Where’s my shrimp?” Mike asks. 

“He’s wandering around outside with Jay’s old video camera,” hot Jay says. He pulls his shirt off and seems to consider getting in the bed, hesitating at the edge of the mattress. “Don’t tell him I told you that, though.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“He’s making something for you. A movie, a present. For Christmas.”

“Jesus,” Mike says, annoyed by him. “Why’d you ruin the surprise?”

Hot Jay rolls his eyes. 

“Who’s in the shower?” he asks. 

“How should I know? Probably nerd Mike and chubby Jay, they always take the longest.”

“Well. It makes sense to double up. To save water.”

He gives Mike a look that’s almost sheepish. Mike has to hold in a laugh when he realizes that hot Jay wants him to follow him into the shower, to be taken care of in there. Mike almost never fucks around with him in shrimp Jay’s absence, because shrimp Jay is almost never not at his side while he’s in the apartment. 

“What’s his movie about?” Mike asks. 

“I think it’s just shots of like, funny signs and cool looking mushrooms and the sunrise and whatever else, spliced together nonsensically and set to music. He doesn’t know how to make a movie. Jay is teaching him how to edit. Just act surprised when he gives it to you.” 

Mike grunts, still annoyed that hot Jay ruined the actual surprise for him but so charmed by the idea of shrimp Jay running around with a video camera, making something for him, that he’s feeling generous. He pats the bed and doesn’t even make fun of hot Jay for falling down next to him needfully and groping his pecs through his t-shirt.

“Are these the same ones you came in yesterday?” Mike asks, also groping him, rubbing his palm against the growing bulge of hot Jay’s cock as it stands up for him inside the little gym shorts. 

“Mhmm, I washed them.” 

Hot Jay gets almost sweet when it’s just the two of them. He puts his head on Mike’s shoulder and sighs, his eyes sinking shut while he humps Mike’s hand. Mike wonders if he resents not having his own person all to himself, too. He sometimes seems more like he’d want his own Jay than his own Mike, though he’s a size queen like all of them and is soon pawing at Mike’s dick, slipping his fingers into the slit of his boxers to tickle along the shaft, teasing. 

“Your breath stinks,” hot Jay mutters when Mike tries to kiss him, but he swoons forward to lick at Mike’s mouth when Mike pulls back, offended by that remark though he knows it’s true. 

“You stink, period,” Mike says, though the scent of any Jay’s sweat gets him going. “You want me to take a shower with you? Or do you want me to bend you over and give you that dick? You can only pick one.” 

Hot Jay looks sincerely troubled by having to make this decision, his fingers hooked into the collar of Mike’s shirt. He looks so cute in his little shorts that Mike almost gives in and says he can have both, but then shrimp Jay barrels into the room so all bets are off. 

“You’re awake!” shrimp Jay says, throwing himself onto Mike. He’s stripped off his winter wear but still carries the cold from outside, mostly on his nose, which he buries against Mike’s warm throat. “Mhmm, and you’re hard,” he says, wiggling on Mike’s lap. 

“Don’t get any ideas about his boner,” hot Jay says, tugging on stud Mike’s arm. “He’s taking a shower with me. That’s my choice,” he says when Mike turns to look at him, surprised. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Mike says, sensing that now is not the time to be mean about this.

“I want to come, too,” shrimp Jay whines, his mouth wet and warm on Mike’s throat and his dick already poking into Mike’s gut, half hard. 

“You can’t,” hot Jay says, standing. He adjusts his shorts, still tenting them. “You won’t fit. And I get first dibs on him because I was the one here when he woke up.”

“Since when is that a rule?” shrimp Jay asks.

He leans back to give hot Jay a pitiful, pleading look, then turns it on Mike. He looks so sweet, it’s crushing to refuse him, but Mike sees now that he’s been a little cruel to hot Jay, assuming that he doesn’t have real feelings about any of this while Mike has fixated too much on wondering if shrimp Jay loves him the way the other Jays love their Mikes. Now he knows shrimp Jay is making a movie for him as a surprise Christmas present. That feels like love to Mike.

“I’ll be quick,” Mike says, petting shrimp Jay’s sides. “And I want you to still be dirty when I come back in here to take care of you,” he adds, muttering this into shrimp Jay’s ear, which is also still cold from his tromping around outdoors. “You know I like it when you’re a sweaty little gremlin for me.” 

Shrimp Jay snorts and leans in to bite the lobe of Mike’s ear, gremlin-like. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Mike shifts shrimp Jay off his lap and stands, beckoning for hot Jay to follow. He does, in a kind of slouching, resigned way that’s rare for him, especially when he’s wearing those shorts. The bathroom is still steamy from whomever just finished their own shower. Mike shuts the door behind them, locks it, and is relieved when he turns on the shower and finds there’s still hot water. Now that it’s getting really cold out, the most vicious fights result from overindulgent hot water usage. 

“Are you ever gonna cut this?” Mike asks when they’re standing under the hot water together and he’s running his fingers through hot Jay’s hair, which is so long now that it’s curling a bit on the end. 

“Probably soon,” hot Jay says, giving it a toss. He hasn’t gotten it wet yet. They’ve just been standing there staring at each other, neither of them even reaching for the soap. 

“I’d go with you. I mean, I’d sit there, in the waiting area, if--”

“That’s not why I haven’t cut it yet,” hot Jay snaps. Mike should have known better than to make any insinuation to his fear of leaving the apartment. “I just-- What, you don’t like it?”

Since when do you care, stud Mike doesn’t say, because he should probably stop saying stuff like that to hot Jay. 

“I like it,” Mike says, running his fingers through it again. “Like getting a good handful when I’m fucking you, and. It feels extra soft, long like this.”

Hot Jay sniffs and looks down at Mike’s chest. He wants something, clearly, and Mike isn’t sure he’ll be able to work out what that is exactly. He knows hot Jay is too prideful to ask, whatever it is. He picks up Jay’s hands and holds them against his chest, raising his eyebrows as if to ask ‘this?’ when Jay peers up at him. Sometimes his eyes seem so different from shrimp Jay’s, not even green at all, and sometimes they’re exactly the same. 

“Sorry,” hot Jay says, which is a first. “But I think I want you to fuck me after all.” 

“In the shower? We don’t even have lube. Turn around, put your hands on the tiles. You picked showering, so. I’m gonna wash you.” 

Hot Jay hurries to obey, seems glad for the order. Lately he’s had a dominant streak in bed and shrimp Jay and stud Mike have let him do whatever he wants, always curious to see where it will go. Maybe now he doesn’t know how to ask for the roles to reverse again. He has a hard time asking for things when he’s afraid doing so will reveal some weakness, as if they’re all waiting to attack him and not always working to keep him safe. 

“Are you cold?” Mike asks, because hot Jay is shivering a little as Mike rubs soap all over his back and up to his shoulders. 

“You’re blocking the water,” Jay says. 

“But it’s warm in here.” Mike reaches around to feel for Jay’s hard nipples, moaning when he rubs his fingers around them and Jay presses back against the heat of Mike’s body, getting him soapy, too. 

“I want a real bathtub,” Jay says, staring down at his feet when Mike moves back to wash him again, his hands sliding down toward Jay’s ass. “I mean one I can soak in. This one’s always disgusting. Everybody’s so-- Hairy, and. I just want to sit in a clean, deep bathtub with hot water up to my chin.” 

“That’s a nice dream,” Mike says. 

“We didn’t even have water for bathing on that spaceship, you know. We had sonic showers, or anyway that’s how I think of them now. ‘Cause of Star Trek. They blasted you clean in a few seconds, but it wasn’t relaxing.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, his heart heavy when he thinks of shrimp Jay there alone, not even able to find comfort in the heat of a shower. “You don’t ever have to go back there, you know,” he says, pressing himself to Jay’s back again. 

“I-- What? I know that.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to. I mean, before you’re ready, or--”

“I know that!”

Jay’s shoulders go tense and he puts his forehead against the tiled wall of the shower. He relaxes a little when Mike reaches around to wash his chest, and makes a hurt sound under his breath when Mike pushes his soapy hand up to touch his throat, gentle. 

“Who’s this guy you’re talking to online?” Mike asks. 

“Nobody. A dork who lusts after me. I only talk to him when I’m bored.” 

“I don’t like it.”

“Why, are you jealous?” 

Jay laughs like that would be ridiculous. He lets Mike turn him around, and meets his eyes only briefly before stepping into the water to rinse off. 

“I don’t trust the outside world with you,” stud Mike says. “For obvious reasons.”

“That wasn’t my fucking fault! I looked at my phone for two seconds and that old man put something in my drink. The bartender should have noticed, or, I don’t know, the old man must have used dark magic to do it that stealthily, or maybe I’d had more to drink than I realized--”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mike says, reaching down to touch his chin and tilt his head back so their eyes meet. “It wasn’t, you’re right.”

“I know that,” Jay says. His voice is tight. He swallows, and closes his eyes when Mike tilts his head again, getting his hair wet. 

“And yeah I’m jealous,” Mike says when he’s working shampoo into Jay’s hair, taking his time with it and massaging his scalp. Jay still has his eyes closed. “How could I not be jealous of some guy you flirt with? You’re one of my Jays, aren’t ya?”

Jay opens his eyes, blinks when water runs down his forehead and shuts them again. He presses his lips together in a failed attempt to hide his pleased little grin and lets Mike keep treating his hair like it’s sacred, like he can’t get enough of the privilege of being able to touch it. 

“It’s not fair you get us both,” Jay says. “I should have two Mikes.” 

“You want two?” 

He thinks of big Mike and feels rage toward him for once having had all four Jays all to himself and not wanting to keep it that way. Not that it was probably the paradise stud Mike is imagining, not that he isn’t glad to be alive, and not like he even wants anything from chubby Jay’s surly ass other than free popcorn, but still. The original throwing his chance to be their only Mike away was such a weird move. 

“Or maybe you just want one of your own?” Mike says when Jay doesn’t answer his other question. Jay is rinsing the shampoo out of his hair, eyes shut against the spray of the water. “Do you wish he’d made three Mike clones? I wonder what the third one would be like. Maybe he’d be like you.”

“Idiot,” Jay mutters. He wipes his face clear and blinks at Mike angrily. “You’re the one who’s like me.” 

“I am? What? How?”

Jay scoffs. “I’m not gonna say it.” 

Mike is confused. Unless Jay is just saying he’s the hottest Mike, which. He’d take, actually, from hot Jay. 

“Don’t give me that smug look,” Jay says when Mike grins. He lets Mike hold his slick, trim waist, lets Mike pull him close. “I like how things are. Being a free agent. But if you want to think of me as one of your Jays. That’s fine. You can. I’m okay with that.” 

“Okay,” Mike says, cupping Jay’s jaw and bringing his face down close. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.” 

They take a long time in the shower, jerking each other off in a kind of slow dance-paced back and forth under the water. Mike kisses Jay a lot, barely stopping to look down at Jay’s hand on his dick. He should kiss hot Jay more often, because he’s kissing back like he needs it, like he doesn’t want to stop. 

“Oh fffuck,” hot Jay says when he comes, after he’s pumped Mike dry. The way his dick throbs in Mike’s fist as it empties over his fingers makes him want to get hard again, and he will, soon, for shrimp Jay.

“Good, Jay,” Mike says, still a little breathless from his own orgasm. “There you go. Let it all out.” He keeps squeezing slow and firm, milking him until he’s whining, nothing left to give. “Sweetheart,” Mike says, soft under his breath, and he gives Jay a big, wet, crushing kiss before he can laugh about the nickname. 

Not that Mike really minds being laughed at for things like that. He just doesn’t want hot Jay to feel like he needs to laugh it off right now. It’s something Mike wanted to give for keeps.

Jay lets Mike hold him under the water until it gets cold. They don’t say much as they’re drying off, until Jay says he’s going to raid original Jay’s closet. The originals are at work and will be for hours. Mike swats hot Jay’s towel-clad ass as he’s leaving, smirks at him when he turns to look at Mike from over his shoulder, then lets him disappear into the originals’ bedroom to do his wardrobe looting. 

Shrimp Jay is sitting in the middle of the sex bed, cocooned in the comforter with just his little face peeking out. He looks kind of sad and shy for a blink, like he hated waiting so long for Mike to come back. Then he opens the comforter to show Mike he’s naked and hard, waiting like a present to be unwrapped, and grins when Mike tosses his towel away.

“Lock it,” shrimp Jay says when Mike shuts the door. “Unless-- Will he come in to get his clothes?”

“No, he’s stealing from original Jay’s closet.” Mike turns the lock and raises his eyebrows. “You got something special in mind?” he asks, adjusting his cock. He once came eight times in one day for them. His balls fucking hurt by the end of it, but he had no regrets. 

“Something special, yeah,” shrimp Jay says, scooting back to make room for him on the bed. His eyes are bright, needy, and he hurries to get the comforter around Mike’s body, too, as goosebumps soar across his skin. “That thing where I’m a shoplifter and you’re the security guard who caught me,” Jay says, keeping his voice low and his face pressed to Mike’s. “Can we do that one?”

“Sure, baby,” Mike says, stroking his skin under the comforter, feeling him shiver and press close for more. He’s such a clinger, and it feels so good, getting wrapped up in his skinny limbs. He’s flushed across his cheeks because asking for weird role play is nothing to him but wanting the door locked is a big deal. “Want me to put on the uniform?” Mike asks.

“Nah,” shrimp Jay says, and he pulls back to pet Mike’s stubble. “Just you is enough,” he says, every word a little quieter than the last. 

Mike moans and presses him to the bed, needing to kiss him for a while before they start that security guard and shoplifter game, which involves spanking and dirty talk. He’s up for that, into it as fuck, but he needs this first, to feel the uncertainty melting out of Jay’s delicate shrimp bones while the last of Mike’s insecure bullshit evaporates, too, because oh god, they love him, they both do. 

*


	3. Chapter 3

Hot Jay stands in his original’s closet for a long time, pawing at his collection of neatly hung screen print t-shirts. Half of them are too small for the original now, ordered to fit hot Jay’s dimensions back when the original Jay was trimmer. Since Mike and the others moved in original Jay has indulged more, and he has less time and space for workouts. The extra weight isn’t much and doesn’t look bad on him, but hot Jay feels for him, sees how tired he gets, and stressed about money in a way the others ignore more easily because they’re unrealistic and self-absorbed. He picks a shirt with some horror character he doesn’t recognize on it and holds it against his face, breathing in the scent of original Jay that’s slightly different from his own. 

Dressed from head to toe in his original’s clothing, he goes to the bedroom that’s supposed to be his and tries the door, feeling like he should have known it would be locked. He huffs and listens to the sound of the shrimp giggling inside, stud Mike’s voice a low rumble of incomprehensible dirty talk, bedsprings squeaking. He tosses his freshly blow-dried hair and walks away. Fine, whatever. He had his turn already anyway. 

“What’s this?” he asks when he comes into the living room and finds nerd Mike and chubby Jay curled up together on the couch, watching some sci fi show set in space. 

“The Expanse,” chubby Jay says. 

“What’s it about?”

“Too hard to explain,” nerd Mike says. “We’re already a season and a half into it,” he adds, just to make it extra clear that hot Jay is not invited to watch with them.

“Looks like more Star Trek shit,” hot Jay says, so fucking tired of shows and movies set in space that he could scream. Don’t the other Jays remember what it was like? He knows shrimp Jay does, has comforted him through enough nightmares while stud Mike snores away obliviously. 

Nerd Mike and chubby Jay ignore this comment, absorbed in their space drama and in the way they can’t even seem to sit on a fucking couch without holding each other like one of them will be sucked out an airlock if the other one ever lets go. Hot Jay sighs and paces into the kitchen to stare out the window, feeling cooped up. He could go for a walk, or sit in the dumpy little courtyard at the center of the apartment complex, where a handful of depressingly unsupervised children play. He could do it, and nothing bad would happen. Nor would anything good, probably. He checks his phone. No new messages from Simon. It’s still morning in L.A.

The forecast says there’s a chance of snow, so Jay decides not to venture out. He hates waddling around in winter wear. Original Jay has embarrassingly poor taste in coats and hats, also scarves, and big Mike’s are ten times worse. In summer he’ll go out more. He’s said so, and original Jay has warned him that summer is short here, over in a blink. 

“Why do you even live here?” hot Jay responded. He knew he was being snotty but couldn’t help it. “Isn’t this the absolute worst place in this country to live, basically?”

“No,” Jay had said, calmly. “I live here because I grew up here and my family is here.”

“Can’t wait to meet them.”

Jay had cut him a look like that was a mean comment, and as usual hot Jay felt wounded by having his own meanness reflected back at him. He’s working on being nicer. He’s thinking about working on it, anyway. Simon is a good punching bag, better than the oversensitive Mikes and the bitchy Jays. Simon likes it when Jay teases him, gets dimples for it. They started chatting on Grindr when Simon was in Milwaukee for business but never actually got to meet up in person. The whole getting kidnapped and locked in a chest in an old man’s basement thing happened, and then Simon left town, his business in the midwest concluded. 

Jay isn’t sure why they’ve kept in touch, with Simon so far away and Jay in no mood to entertain strange male company in person anymore, even if Simon did come back to the midwest for work. He thinks perhaps Simon is just as lonely as he is, despite the fact that he seems rich and likeable, the kind of guy who has a lot of friends, and the fact that Jay can’t go two steps in any direction without finding himself in the company of some Mike or Jay or combination thereof. 

When the originals get home from work it’s an hour and a half after their shift at the VCR repair shop ended and Jay can smell beer on their breath. So they treated themselves to a twenty dollar tab at a bar on the way home. He knows they deserve it but still feels pissed off, left out, tired of waiting around for his life to start while everyone else does whatever they want. 

He has an idea during dinner, while the original Jay blabs about the huge Thanksgiving meal that he expects everyone to help him prepare. It’s clear to hot Jay that the original misses his family and that having an actual holiday celebration with the clones has come to mean a lot to him. Big Mike seems less into it but supportive, nodding along every time Jay looks to him for reassurance in the way he does when he knows he’s being corny or bossy and wants Mike to support him in it. 

Hot Jay waits till after dinner, when original Jay is indulging in a solo shower, to approach big Mike with his idea. Big Mike is in the originals’ bedroom, stretched out on his stomach on their bed and paging through a horror fanboy merch catalog. 

“Looking for a Christmas present for my Jay,” he explains when hot Jay sits beside him. “I want to get him something really good, you know, it’s our first Christmas together. But my wallet’s kinda light for obvious reasons.” 

“Make him a movie,” Jay says. “Like shrimp is doing for stud.”

“Shh!” Mike nods toward the open door. “Not so loud. That’s supposed to be a secret.” 

Jay sighs and decides not to mention he already spoiled the surprise. He’s not even sure why he did it. Maybe he’s jealous or something. He definitely needs a pick me up. 

“Soo,” he says, poking Mike’s side when his eyes return to the catalog. “I have a request.”

“I just told you, my wallet’s already light.”

“No shit, Mike. This won’t be expensive. And I need it, really. Please.”

“What is it?”

Jay chews his lip, kind of embarrassed by this. They’ll all tease him mercilessly. But he keeps thinking about it, and is starting to feel like he’ll go out of his mind if he doesn’t leave this apartment for something that he, hot Jay, personally considers fun. Getting dragged along on errands or excursions of the original Jay’s design ain’t cutting it.

“I want to go to a club,” he says, blurting it out when he hears the shower shutting off, a reminder that his alone time with big Mike is limited. “A dance club,” he adds when Mike stares at him blankly. “A gay one. With you.” 

Mike processes this and starts to smile. Jay glares at him. He needs this favor, but he won’t tolerate being made fun of for it. 

“What?” he snaps. “What’s funny about that? I know the original Jay thinks the height of entertainment is sitting on his ass in a dark theater watching some gory arthouse crap, but I’m not him. I want this other thing. And it’s got to be a real club, with multiple floors, not just one of the gay bars where everybody’s watching the Packers game and eating wings.” 

“That sounds expensive,” Mike says, the amusement draining from his eyes. 

“No. I found one. It’s on National Avenue and it’s has good reviews, and no cover charge. And they’d doing a special night for dancing and stuff on the day after Thanksgiving. That’s when I want to go. With you. Just you, nobody else. Not even the original Jay,” he adds, keeping his voice low, though the bathroom door is still shut.

Mike smiles again, differently now. He sits up and closes the horror merch catalog before hiding it under the mattress like it’s porn. 

“This is kinda sweet, actually,” he says. “You asking me for this.”

Jay opens his mouth to say it’s not sweet, it’s about going out and getting wasted on a dance floor to shake off the shitty feeling he’s had since the basement incident, with big Mike there as his sober bodyguard, but before he can put any of that into words the original Jay walks in wearing his dorky flannel robe and slippers, rubbing a towel through his wet hair.

“You shouldn’t dry your hair with a towel,” hot Jay says, muttering. He feels defeated, like this was a dumb idea and they’re both gonna laugh at him now. “It makes it less soft.”

“Oh-- Really?” Jay pauses and looks down at the towel, then smooths his hair back with his fingers. “Yours is so long now,” he says. 

“Yes, everybody loves to point that out like they’re the first one to notice. I’ll get it cut soon. In fact-- Mike. You could take me to get my hair cut before the thing I was just asking you about. Directly before. If you’re willing, that is.”

“Willing to do what?” original Jay asks, giving Mike a nervous look. 

“He wants me to take him out dancing.” 

“Oh.” Original Jay looks more confused than anything. “What?”

“It’s a thing that people do,” hot Jay says. “I realize you wouldn’t be caught dead doing it but I promise nobody who’ll judge you for it will be there. Please, Jay? I really need, like. Something that’s just for me. And Mike would keep me safe.” He puts his hand over Mike’s on the mattress, hoping to flatter his sense of protective capability. “Right?”

“Uhh, sure,” Mike says, giving the original Jay a look like he’s seeking permission, which annoys hot Jay but was to be expected. “It’s the day after Thanksgiving, this thing he wants to go to,” he says. “That okay by you?”

“I guess,” original Jay says, looking confused again. “Just don’t spend a fortune on drinks.”

“I’ll be the only one drinking,” hot Jay says, giddy relief building in his chest when he realizes this is happening, they’re going to let him have it. “Mike will stay sober and protect me.”

“I’m gonna need a few beers,” Mike says, wincing. “If you want me to do any dancing. But I can watch out for you, sure. I won’t get drunk.”

“That works for me.”

Hot Jay squeezes Mike’s fingers gratefully and turns to watch his original pulling on the soft flannel pants he sleeps in. He shrugs off the robe and replaces it with a thermal shirt. Mike is yawning, and there’s no Star Trek time tonight, with stud Mike away for his shift. They save those family-style viewings for nights when everyone is in the apartment after dinner.

“Can I sleep in here with you guys tonight?” hot Jay asks, thinking of how those fuckers locked him out of the other bedroom earlier.

“Suure,” original Jay says. “But we’re just going to sleep, okay? I’m too tired for any shenanigans.” 

“Fine, fine,” hot Jay says, scooting back against their pillows and pulling Mike along with him. “Seriously, though. Thank you. I’m really excited for, uh. Having this club thing to look forward to.”

“You deserve it,” original Jay says. “It can be your Christmas present, okay? ‘Cause it’s not gonna be cheap.” 

“I don’t care about Christmas,” hot Jay says, reclining against Mike’s chest and feeling princely in way that he hasn’t managed to in a while. It’s his natural state and he’s missed it a lot. “But, sure. Call it a Christmas present if you want.”

“You’re gonna like Christmas,” original Jay says. “You’ll see.”

Hot Jay turns to look up at Mike and rolls his eyes when original Jay goes into the closet to hang up this robe. 

“He’s right,” Mike says. “I love Christmas.”

“You weirdos. Whatever.” 

Hot Jay presses back against the bulky warmth of Mike’s body and wonders if they might even let him sleep in the middle. He’s a little let down that they don’t want to fuck, but he’s always liked sleeping in this bed, which has the superior mattress and the sheets with the highest thread count. Just as he’s really getting comfortable, his cheek resting on big Mike’s pleasantly flabby bicep while original Jay does his nightly crunches on the floor by the bed, Shrimp Jay comes into the open bedroom doorway and surveys the scene with a pout.

“I’m sleeping in here tonight,” hot Jay announces. 

“What?” shrimp Jay looks at big Mike as if he’ll refute this. “But. Stud Mike’s on shift.”

“So?” hot Jay says, not in the mood for the shrimp’s entitled whining. “You’ve slept alone before.”

He hears what he said, too late, and sees shrimp’s eyes widen in shock before he whirls around and hurries away. 

“I meant--” hot Jay tries to say, but the door across the hall is already slamming. He hears the lock click, too. 

Hot Jay turns to Mike, horrified with himself, but the originals won’t understand why that comment was so cruel. They don’t know about shrimp Jay being alone on the ship before they were made, unless he’s told them, and by the mild look on big Mike’s face and the fact that original Jay is still just doing his crunches like this is just another petty squabble among his clones he can tell they don’t know shit about why shrimp Jay feels gut punched by what hot Jay just said.

“I only meant that he sleeps in the bed alone after I get up in the morning and work out,” hot Jay says, as if big Mike has demanded an explanation and isn’t just lazily rubbing his fingertips over hot Jay’s back like he’s done nothing wrong. “When-- When our Mike is at work, and-- Ah, shit.”

“What’s wrong?” original Jay asks, poking his head up over the edge of the mattress, a little breathless from his crunches. 

“Nothing. You guys wouldn’t understand. I have to go.” 

“Okay?” original Jay says, standing. “Everything all right?”

“It’s fine. Never mind, I’ll sleep with you guys tomorrow when the stud Mike isn’t working.”

“Yeah, that’s better,” big Mike says, yawning. “Don’t leave shrimpy by himself with how cold it gets in here at night. Shut the door behind you, okay?”

Hot Jay steps out into the hallway and closes the originals’ bedroom door behind him. His heart is pounding. Poor shrimp Jay has certainly slept alone before. They don’t even talk about what his life was like before the other clones were made, but when he wakes from nightmares and clings to hot Jay like he’s afraid he’ll disappear, with his little face scrunched up tight like he can will him to stay, it’s pretty obvious what his bad dreams are about.

Nerd Mike and chubby Jay are giggling inside their tent, oblivious. Hot Jay takes a deep breath and knocks softly on the other bedroom door after trying the knob to make sure it’s still locked. 

“Hey,” he says, knocking again. “I didn’t mean-- C’mon. I didn’t mean it like that. Let me in.”

Silence, and then a little gaspy noise that might be sob-related.

“Shrimp,” Jay says, jiggling the door knob and starting to feel mildly panicked about not being able to comfort him or make this right, because the door is in the way. “Jay. C’mon. Open up.” 

“Go away! I hate you!”

He’s definitely crying in there, though he’s doing his best to sound like he’s not. 

Hot Jay kneels down and tries to imagine he could figure out how to pick the lock, but it’s hopeless and he deserves to be locked out, anyway. He drifts miserably into the living room, knowing he won’t be able to sleep tonight, and not just because he’s been left out on the couch like a pet who misbehaved. 

“Hey,” he says, going over to rap his knuckles against the side of the tent. 

“No talking to us through the tent!” nerd Mike says.

Hot Jay snarls down at the thing, wanting to kick it across the room, and them with it. 

“I don’t want to talk to you, asshole, I just need the laptop. Give it over.” 

“We don’t have it,” chubby Jay says.

“Bullshit. It’s not out here.”

“Stud Mike took it to work! He’s writing a novel.”

Chubby Jay and nerd Mike both crack up at that, as if the idea of anyone other than them doing anything is hilarious by default.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” hot Jay says, more to himself than to them. They don’t respond, anyway, back to pretending he’s not there because that is the rule: no talking through the tent, everybody act like it’s their unbreachable little love paradise cabin. 

Hot Jay stretches out on the loveseat with his headphones plugged into his phone, music blasting so he won’t have to listen to nerd Mike and chubby Jay tearfully fucking while saying ‘I love you’ or whatever disgusting shit they get up to in there. He opens his chat ap and sends a message to Simon, needing to talk to someone who thinks he’s worth a damn, even if they don’t really know him. 

Jbman913: hey 

Simon responds promptly as usual, which makes hot Jay smile a little, even while his chest still feels caved in from the thought of shrimp Jay crying alone in the bedroom. 

Sayssimon1: Heyyy. How’s it going?  
Jbman913: shitty  
Sayssimon1: Uh oh. Why’s that?  
Jbman913: I’m fighting with my roommate. Let’s talk about something else.  
Sayssimon1: Okey dokey. 

Jay rolls his eyes at that. Simon is a huge dork. He puts even nerd Mike to shame in that department. But he’s also so earnest, or something. He’s not embarrassed by his dorkiness at all, probably because it’s brought him great fortune in some way. He hasn’t told Jay what he does for a living, but hints here and there suggest that he has a lot of money and doesn’t like to brag about it. 

Sayssimon1: What are you doing for Thanksgiving?  
Jbman913: gorging with my family. u?  
Sayssimon1: I’m staying in L.A. this year, have to work.   
Jbman913: that sucks  
Sayssimon1: actually I prefer it to seeing my folks.   
Jbman913: u must really love ur job or really hate ur fam then  
Sayssimon1: haha  
Sayssimon1: I love my job, mostly

Lately Jay finds himself wanting to ask Simon big questions like, what’s it’s like to have parents? But that would require disclosing that he’s a clone from outer space. 

Jbman913: actually I’m not gonna gorge  
Jbman913: gonna eat light bc I’m going to an event the day after thxgiving  
Sayssimon1: Oh, admirable! What’s the event?  
Jbman913: clubbing  
Jbman913: with this guy i’ve been fucking

He hopes Simon will be jealous about that last bit, though he knows it’s dumb. He just likes being wanted, when it doesn’t lead to near death disaster. 

Sayssimon1: that sounds fun  
Sayssimon1: well, that’s a lie, lol  
Sayssimon1: I’m sure you’ll have fun, but I’m not really a club guy myself.  
Jbman913: what kind of guy r u  
Sayssimon1: watching movies on the couch kind of guy  
Jbman913: ughhh. So are all my roommates  
Sayssimon1: all? How many do you have?  
Jbman913: 6  
Sayssimon1: holy shit! No wonder you barely ever have privacy for video chat  
Jbman913: its hell  
Sayssimon1: I bet. Geez. I didn’t realize people outside of LA and NYC packed into apartments like that.   
Jbman913: yeah well I’m poor

He feels dumb after sending that. Before, he was pretending to have a steady income as a marketing consultant, among other lies. Lately he just wants to tell someone the truth. 

Sayssimon1: Do you need some help?  
Sayssimon1: I have money  
Sayssimon1: lol sorry that sounds really sketchy

It does, so Jay just says no thanks and logs off. His heart is pounding again, and there’s no chance of sleep. Simon is probably just another guy who wants to pay him to take his clothes off on camera. Jay should stop chatting with him, or find someone else, or maybe just do the strip show and take the money.

When chubby Jay emerges from the tent to get a glass of water from the kitchen the sex smell that comes from inside makes hot Jay both want to gag and want to be in his own sex-smelling bed. He rolls against the back cushions on the couch and leaves his headphones in, though doing so jams one bud uncomfortably against his left ear. He groans when chubby Jay touches his hip and jostles him.

“What,” hot Jay says, pulling the headphones out.

“Why’re you in the doghouse?”

“I’m not. Go back to your tent and stay out of it.” 

“Jesus, fine.”

Chubby Jay lingers to pet the back of his neck a few times. Hot Jay doesn’t want his pity, but doesn’t swat him away, and feels rejected when he hears the tent zipping up again. 

He eventually manages to slip into a thin, shivery sleep during which nightmares about that chest in that basement snap around him curling vines, dragging him down into dark places. He makes an embarrassing yelping noise when stud Mike wakes him up at dawn, squatting beside the couch and looking concerned. 

“Why are you out here?” he asks, pulling the twisted blankets back up to Jay’s chin. He looks stupidly hot in his security guard uniform, hair messed up with static-filled cowlicks, and hot Jay resists the impulse to throw his arms around him and cling, shrimp-style.

“I said something bad, by accident,” hot Jay says, knowing stud Mike won’t believe the ‘by accident’ part. “To shrimp. He locked me out.”

Stud Mike’s face changes instantly, the worried sympathy for hot Jay departing in favor of righteous anger on behalf of his beloved shrimp.

“What’d you say?”

“Something about sleeping alone. I wasn’t thinking.” 

Stud Mike rolls his eyes like that’s typical and stands with a groan. 

“Come with me,” he says, offering his hand. 

“Why? He won’t accept my apologies, I tried.”

“Just come get in bed then, it’s freezing out here. What have they got the thermostat on, jesus?”

“You know they turn it down to like fifty-five at night to save money. I’m fine. Go-- Comfort him. He was upset. He’ll only want you.”

Stud Mike sighs and goes. Jay listens to him trying the door and then rapping on it softly.

“Baby?” he says, soft and sweet, worried. “It’s me, I’m home.”

There’s the scamper of shrimp feet across the floorboards inside the room, then the lock unclicks and the door opens. 

“What’s wrong?” stud Mike asks, whispering. Shrimp Jay makes a wordless little sound and pulls him inside. The door closes, and the lock reclicks.

Jay pulls the blankets over his face, which is burning from fucking shame, of all things. He must have really fucked up if shrimp Jay willingly spent the whole night alone in there with his anger. Normally he’s quick to forgive, especially if it means not being alone at night.

He tilts back forth between anger and regret in the days that follow, because shrimp Jay is holding a grudge and it’s really unfair that one thoughtless statement should mean that hot Jay is on the outs with him for good. Stud Mike gives hot Jay the occasional look of pity, and the originals let him cling to their backs in bed at night, but it’s the shrimp having it out for him that’s really getting under hot Jay’s skin in a way he wouldn’t have expected. 

“You’re just not gonna talk to me anymore?” he says when they’re chopping vegetables together at the kitchen counter. It’s Thanksgiving, and the original Jay has been flitting around obsessing over the turkey all morning while big Mike makes runs to the store for things they forgot to buy, as if this is an important state dinner and not just another night with all the same people at their table. 

“I’ll talk,” shrimp Jay says, without looking up from his celery slicing. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Uhh. Did you know big Mike is taking me out tomorrow?”

This gets the shrimp to look up at him, at least. He looks stunned, then furious.

“Just you?” he says. “What about the rest of us?”

“You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“What does it matter? They haven’t taken us out to a movie in almost a month. It costs like a hundred bucks for all of us to go. But you get to go somewhere, just you? That fucking figures. Does old Jay know?”

“Stop calling him that, and yes, he knows. Of course he knows. You think big Mike does anything without his permission?” 

Shrimp Jay sniffs and goes back to chopping celery, now at a quickened, rage-filled pace.

“How long are you gonna be mad at me for?” hot Jay asks. 

“I don’t know. Probably at least until Christmas, if you don’t bring me along tomorrow.”

“Oh, fuck that! You’re the only one who gets to act all entitled and make demands? Yeah, that’s fair.”

Shrimp Jay says nothing. His jaw is tight, and he doesn’t speak to hot Jay for the remainder of the day, not even at Thanksgiving dinner after he’s downed three glasses of cheap box wine. 

Hot Jay has no wine, because it’s red and stains everyone’s teeth terribly. He helps himself to only a few lean pieces of the turkey, some brussel sprouts, a small portion of green bean casserole and a puddle of cranberry sauce. Everyone complains that he’s not eating enough, except shrimp Jay, who doesn’t care and barely looks in his direction. 

“I have a big day tomorrow,” hot Jay says, fine with rubbing it in now. “I just want to look and feel my best. Forgive me if overeating isn’t what I consider fun.” 

He braces himself for chubby Jay to leave the table in tears or something, but he’s too busy whispering something into nerd Mike’s ear to seem to have noticed the comment at all. Nerd Mike snickers and kisses chubby Jay on the mouth right there at the table like a barbarian. They’re in their own little world as usual, having helped themselves to more than their share of the box wine. 

“Can we finally have some kind of sex tonight?” hot Jay asks when he’s sitting in the middle of the originals’ bed after dinner and Trek time, trying to look alluring in his boxer briefs and a thin t-shirt that shows not just the shape but the color of his nipples through the fabric.

“I’m way too full,” big Mike says, rubbing his gut. “And Jay’s half asleep. He got up at four to start that turkey.” 

Jay comes back from brushing his teeth and expresses the same opinion. He squirms into the middle of the bed, which he apparently gets by default, gropes for Mike and is passed out with his face buried between Mike’s tits within two minutes, his ass wiggled back to rest warmly against hot Jay’s naked thighs. 

“Excited for tomorrow?” Mike asks, stroking his fingers through hot Jay’s now overlong hair. 

“Uh-huh,” he says, though mostly he’s filled with unrelenting low-level rage and hurt feelings that he doesn’t want to think about, even while Mike touches him like he’s still a little bit special.

“Get some rest,” big Mike says, settling his arm around both Jays. “You’ll need it. We’re gonna party tomorrow, you and me.”

“Yes,” hot Jay says with bitter determination. 

He’s ready to go fucking wild, honestly.

*

In the morning, hot Jay gets up before either of the originals and goes into the living room to do his workout routine as usual. The tent is silent, and so is the rest of the house, until the bedroom door opens and stud Mike crosses the hall to take a leak. When he’s done he comes into the living room doorway and stands there scratching at his belly through his t-shirt and watching Jay do bicep curls with his free weights.

“Are you going to stand there like a zombie or come do this with me?” hot Jay asks. He misses working out with stud Mike. It used to turn them both on, and the sex afterward would be especially good, even with shrimpy’s freeloading ass along for the ride. 

“I can’t work out right now,” stud Mike says. “My stomach hurts.”

“Ate too much, huh?” 

“No. Well, maybe.” He makes a pathetic face like hot Jay should divine the other reason for his stomach ache. “Tonight’s the big night, huh?”

“What?” Jay says, though of course he knows what he’s referring to.

“Your club debut.” 

“Don’t be an asshole. This means a lot to me. You wouldn’t understand.” 

“No, I get it,” stud Mike mutters, picking at the doorframe where it’s splintered from the time the sex bed crashed into it when they were moving it in. “You and big Mike, huh? I can’t picture him dancing.” 

“I’m sure he’ll be horrible at it, but I don’t care. I just want to get fucked up and have a good time for once.” 

“Mhm.”

“I guess shrimpy is furious about it or whatever.” 

“I dunno. He’s been weird lately. I think he’s frustrated that the original Jay is so good at editing and he’s having to learn all the basics while the original shows off.” 

“That’s fucking bratty. He just expects to automatically be good at everything? How do you know about this, anyway? I thought it was supposed to be a secret.” 

“Well, Jay’s teaching him not just for the movie. He wants to take on freelance editing work again and needs an assistant. But I think he’ll just end up doing all the work himself. Shrimpy says he’s a control freak.”

“That’s very true.” Jay puts the weights down and stares up at stud Mike, breathless. “You’re making me feel self conscious, standing there like that,” he says. Actually, he feels kind of admired and good, almost like stud Mike misses him or something. 

“Sorry,” stud Mike says. 

“Will you guys shut the fuck up?” nerd Mike shouts from inside the tent. “It’s still quiet hours for another forty minutes!” 

“Don’t talk to us through the tent,” stud Mike says, and he looks pretty happy when hot Jay laughs hard at this. Then he waves and goes back into the bedroom, back to the shrimp.

Jay is nervous all day, and he feels stupid about it. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, doing different things with the long hair and debating whether or not he’s really ready to part with it. His appointment is at six thirty, downtown. He’s not sure what he’ll do in the city with big Mike between the hair cut and when the club’s event starts at ten o’clock. They could hang out at the club, which opens its doors at four for happy hour, but Jay feels like sitting there for hours before it gets crowded and rowdy would both spoil the mood and cost a fucking fortune, even if they sip very slowly from their beers.

And he doesn’t want to drink beer, anyway. He wants to do shots. 

“I should have ordered something new for this,” he says when he’s trying on clothes in the original Jay’s closet. 

“Nobody cares what you’re wearing at those things.”

“Oh, like you’d know.”

“I’ve been to gay bars, smart ass. Trust me, you’ll be one of the best looking guys there.” 

“That’s pretty egotistical!” hot Jay says, boggling at him and also grinning, impressed. The original smiles back at him and shrugs. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. He’s spent the day eating leftovers and watching movies and seems perfectly happy to let big Mike have this adventure without him. 

“I can’t speak for Chicago bars or anything fancy like that,” original Jay says. “But in Milwaukee? Yeah. You’ll get plenty of attention. Are you, uh. Okay with that?”

“Big Mike will take care of me,” hot Jay says. 

“I know he won’t let you get hurt. But if being in a crowd just feels like too much, uh. You don’t have to prove anything to big Mike. He won’t tell anyone if you want to leave early and go for a walk or something instead.”

“Except you.”

“Well, okay, but I wouldn’t give you a hard time about it, either--”

“Walking around holding big Mike’s hand in the cold is what you’d prefer to do, but not me. Don’t project onto me, I’ll be fine.” 

He ends up picking out a simple black shirt with a v-neck that looks good on him and wears it over his favorite jeans, which were purchased specifically for him and aren’t just hand-me-downs from Jay’s skinnier days. The best he can do coat-wise is a slim black one with a hood that original Jay says is way too light for how cold out it will be that night. 

“I’ll be fine,” hot Jay assures him. “I’ll have Mike to keep me warm.” 

“Okay,” original Jay says. He doesn’t seem even a little jealous, which is annoying. He turns to big Mike, who is standing near the door while hot Jay puts the finishing touches on his getup. “Don’t drink too much,” original Jay warns. 

“I’ll be good,” big Mike says. He kisses his Jay goodbye and holds out his elbow for hot Jay to take. The others are on the couch, pretending not to care that big Mike is taking hot Jay out on a real date while they have another night in front of the TV with leftovers. Hot Jay meets stud Mike’s eyes and winks. Shrimp Jay is sitting beside him with his arms crossed tight across his puny chest, looking like the portrait of seething jealousy, which doesn’t feel as good as hot Jay might have thought. 

Waiting at the bus stop with big Mike, hot Jay is already pressing close to him when the wind blows cold down the mostly empty street. The whole neighborhood seems to be in a food coma post-Thanksgiving. Jay hopes the city will feel different, more alive. He thinks it will. 

“Aren’t you ever going to ask why I’m sleeping with you and the original these days?” Jay asks when he and big Mike are on the bus together. 

Mike looks at him, surprised.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“No. I’m just offended that you don’t care.”

“I care.” Big Mike puts his hand on hot Jay’s thigh. “Sorry me and Jay haven’t wanted to, uhh. With you, lately. Maybe tonight when we get back we can do something. He’ll probably be asleep, but. We could wake him up.”

“Or you could fuck me in a bathroom stall at the club.”

“Jesus!” Mike says, flushing. He cranes his neck to see if any of the other bus riders have turned to look at them. “Keep it down,” he says, squeezing Jay’s thigh. “And no, I-- I don’t think that would qualify as watching out for you.”

Hot Jay wants to tell big Mike that he’s not here as his babysitter, that he’s his fucking date, but it’s too lame to say out loud, so he stares out the window until they get to the salon. 

The hair cut lifts his spirits right away, making him feel more like his old, pre-kidnapped self. Even better is walking around the city with Mike afterward, huddling close to him because it’s cold and letting Mike point out Christmas light displays as they’re amazing and beautiful, as if they haven’t been in space together and seen the stars from up there. Hot Jay resists the impulse to tease him for being so impressed by this kitschy stuff, and after an hour or so he starts to find the Christmas junk pretty, too. While they wait for their slices of pizza at a cheap place near the club, hot Jay comes up onto his toes and kisses Mike’s scruffy cheek like they’re a pair of normal boyfriends, the only Mike and Jay in the world. Earlier, Mike asked if he should shave before their night out, and hot Jay said no way, keep the stubble, are you kidding? It makes Mike look world-weary and tough, like he’s been through a lot, and the fact that he really has is the hottest thing about him. 

They head in to the club a little before the headliner DJ starts. It’s already crowded, loud and dark with multi-colored lights swirling over the crowd and making Jay think of more sinister versions of the Christmas lights that are twinkling on the streets outside. The press of bodies everywhere takes Jay’s breath away for a few seconds, but with Mike’s hand locked tight around his he quickly feels okay. They’ve checked their coats, which was a fee that Jay didn’t budget for when he planned this out, but Mike covered it in cash with a wave of his hand. By the time they have their first drinks they’re already sweating a little in the close quartered crowd. 

Jay decides he doesn’t want to start dancing right at the beginning of the DJ’s set. That would be embarrassing, probably, some kind of amateur move. He will enter the scene at the right moment, later, when the energy is different. He feels a little drunk after two shots and grins when Mike indulges him with a third, already working on a second beer himself. He knew big Mike would be a perfect partner for this. They can really let loose together, finally.

“Do you like this music?” Jay asks in a shout when they’re huddled close together near the bar, Mike’s huge arm around Jay’s shoulders keeping anyone from getting any ideas about approaching him. 

“Not really,” Mike says, also shouting. “But I don’t dislike it. It’s fun, it’s festive.”

“Festive!” Jay says, laughing at that description. It’s pulsating techno music, loud enough that Jay can feel the reverberations in his bones, traveling up from the heels of his shoes. 

“It is!” Mike says, grinning. “I’ve never been to a place like this, actually.” 

“Jay never took you? Your Jay?”

“Fuck no, he’d hate this! But I’m having fun.” 

Jay scoffs, almost convinced. Mike is being sweet about it, anyway, pressing the occasional wet kiss to Jay neck in a way that almost makes want him to say to hell with this and go home and get on Mike’s dick. He hasn’t gone three whole days without sex since they first got to Earth and Jay held out on inviting Mike over to service all of them, for whatever reason. 

“Whatever they washed your hair with smells so good,” Mike says, sort of swaying Jay into a semi-dance thing. 

“Can I get another shot?” Jay asks, some unwanted and indistinct sad thing lifting its ugly head at the center of him despite how good it feels to be here in the swaying, pulsing real world with Mike holding him close.

“Sure,” Mike says. “But pace yourself. Barfing up forty bucks worth of booze would not be ideal.” 

Mike finishes his second beer on their way to the bar and orders another along with Jay’s shot. Jay wants Mike to get drunk, too, though he knows it’s not a great idea. After three shots he doesn’t care, already wants to break rules and get sloppy. He throws back his fourth and realizes he needs to take a piss. 

“I’ll come with you,” Mike says, still waiting for his beer. “One sec.”

“Nah, I’m good. No one’s gonna kidnap me in the men’s room.” 

“Are-- You sure?”

“Uh-huh.” Jay kisses Mike’s cheek, pretends to feel more carefree than he really does. “Be right back!”

He’s a little dizzy on the way to the men’s room, but he feels better after he’s taken a leak, and he’s shocked by how good he looks in the mirror over the sink while he washes his hands, his salon-styled hair mildly dislodged by the humid air in the club and hanging over his forehead in a fetching way. 

He stares at his reflection and thinks of what he was almost drunk enough to say to Mike. 

_Tell me I’m the only Jay in the world. Pretend like I am, just for tonight. Pretend like I’m him, if you have to._

He’s glad he didn’t say it, still feels weird about even thinking it. Outside the music seems to get louder after a single violent thwump of base that rattles the mirrors over the sinks, and a group of guys crash into the men’s room together, laughing. They’re young, most of them on the small side, and they crowd up behind Jay at the sink to check their reflections. One of them meets his eyes in the mirror and smiles. Jay smiles back, because the guy is cute. He sways on his feet and remembers that someday other people might love him. People who are not Mikes, not Jays. 

“Watch the door,” one of the other guys says, and Jay panics for a second before he sees why. The smallest guy in the group is passing out little white pills to all his friends, and they’re all laughing with nervous excitement as they get ready to take them together. 

“It’s my birthday,” the small guy says when he sees Jay watching this unfold curiously. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” Jay says, edging away from them. 

“You want one?” the guy says, holding up a white pill. “It’s just e, we have extra.”

“Oh my god,” another guys says. “That shit was your birthday present, don’t just give it away.”

“I’m not gonna charge him, I’m not a fucking drug dealer!”

This makes them all laugh hard, and Jay joins in, though he’s not sure why. These people could be his friends, in theory. He could find people to hang out with, people who love clubs and getting fucked up in a festive way. They’re all so sparkly-eyed and younger even than shrimp Jay, seems like. In some weird way he feels like he knows them already. 

“You’re cute,” the birthday guy says when Jay is looking down at the little white pill he’s been handed. “Are you like thirty or something?”

“Uh-huh,” Jay says. He holds up the pill. “What does this do?”

“Oh my god he’s like an alien,” one of the guys says, laughing obnoxiously. 

“It’ll make you feel really good,” another guy says. He’s much cuter than the mean one who laughed. “It’s better than getting drunk, but it’s just a party drug, no big deal. Drink plenty of water.” 

Jay blushes and pops the pill into his mouth, swallows it dry and shakes his head when one of them offers his bottle of water. He might be taking drugs from strangers, but he knows better than to accept drinks from them. 

“Have fun!” the birthday guy says, and he kisses Jay on the cheek. It feels so intimate and sweet that Jay almost wants to stay with them, then he remembers Mike and thinks he should probably get back to him before this drug kicks in. He thanks the group of young guys and pushes out of the bathroom, back into the crowd, which seems to have doubled in size since he crossed the giant room to find the bathrooms. 

There’s a moment when he starts to panic, scanning the room for Mike and unable to spot him, but then he’s there, waiting right outside the bathrooms with a smile, holding his beer and gathering Jay up against him.

“I want to dance now,” Jay says, wishing he could tell Mike about his good experience in the men’s room without him freaking out. 

“Lemme finish this,” Mike says, and Jay is going to protest that he wants to dance _now_ , but then Mike chugs the remainder of his beer in three swallows and pitches the bottle into a trashcan. “Okay,” he says. “Ready.”

Jay grabs his hand and pulls him onto the area near the DJ’s table where most of the dancing is congregated. He doesn't know how to dance, but he’s seen it done, and doesn’t really care, anyway. Most people in the crowd just seem to be jumping and thrashing their arms around like they’re having a good time, no coordination or style required. Jay tries it, and it feels great, right away, especially when Mike laughs like he’s now drunk enough to be having a good time, too. Jay throws his arms around Mike’s neck and gets lifted off the floor, spun around. He laughs so hard that he can’t stop, his face pressed to Mike’s shoulder. 

“I never want to go home,” he says, but not loud enough for Mike to hear. 

After perhaps twenty minutes of dancing all the bad feelings are gone. Then even minutes themselves seem to be gone, and the crowd is just part of the song. It’s like Jay and Mike are the only people in the place but have also melted into some peacefully undulating organism that the entire crowd comprises, and the feeling that both things are true at the same time is so euphoric that Jay gets a boner the next time Mike buries his face against Jay’s throat to catch his breath. 

“Your pupils are huge,” Mike says, speaking directly into Jay’s ear so he’ll be heard. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good, I’m so so good,” Jay says, almost wanting to sob for how true it is. 

“You’re really drunk. Do you need to sit down for a minute?”

“Nnh, no, no break, c’mon please--”

Dancing feels as good as fucking, Jay realizes, spiraling into it fully and feeling like the music is playing more in his body than from the DJ’s table, his hard nipples standing up under his shirt like two little speakers. Jay jumps around to the pumping beat without stopping while Mike hovers and does whatever he can to keep up, mostly acting as a human shield to keep Jay from evaporating into the crowd. Because he would, he thinks, his head spinning when he grabs Mike’s hand and brings it to his crotch, the other people pressed so tightly around them that no one will see, which is ironic, which makes him laugh. 

“Dude,” Mike says, leaving his hand there but not grabbing Jay’s half hard dick like Jay wanted him to. “You’re sweating so much.”

“S’cuz I’m dancing. Mike, pick me up. I want to get on your shoulders like that guy.” 

He points to another couple, a tiny guy up on a big guy’s shoulders. Mike looks at them and then looks back at Jay. He smells so good that Jay forgets what he wanted a second ago and just flings himself onto Mike’s chest. He hugs Mike for a long time before throwing himself into the next song when the first few notes make the whole crowd cheer like the song just saved their lives. Jay cheers, too, though he doesn’t know the song, and when Mike throws his arms up and does the same it feels like he’s saying: I love you, I’ll do whatever you want. Jay kisses him on the mouth for that.

After what feels like one long, blurry blink of too-good-to-contain time they’re in the backseat of some strange car together, and Jay’s ears are ringing. His mouth is open on Mike’s throat, tongue and teeth working lazily. Mike is trying to get Jay to put his coat on. 

“C’mon, you’ll freeze,” Mike says, murmuring this against Jay’s lips when he goes for a kiss instead of threading his arms into the sleeves of the coat. 

“Where are we?” Jay asks, and the world spins away from his grasp when he moves his head. It doesn’t feel wonderful, so he jams his face against Mike’s throat again, to steady himself.

“In the Uber,” Mike says. He manages to get the coat onto Jay and rubs his back. “You’ve asked me like four times, dude.”

“Big night, huh?” some strange man says. 

Jay peeks up from Mike’s throat, alarmed, and then remembers that’s just the driver. They’re in a car, going home. Jay’s calves are throbbing. He laughs and clings to Mike, and to the good feeling that rubbing his hand across Mike’s chest is giving him. 

“It was a special occasion,” Mike says, in a tone that communicates he doesn’t want to talk about it with the driver, which Jay loves him for. He loves Mike so much, and might have said so like a thousand times, back at the club. Maybe he didn’t hear it over the music. Jay wouldn’t mind if he did, though. 

“Are these free?” Jay asks, grabbing a bottle of water from a little pouch on the backseat. He cracks it open and gasps with delight at the sound the bottle cap makes as it separates from the safety mechanism. 

“Free for riders, absolutely,” the driver says. “Please enjoy with my compliments.”

Jay sputters with laughter at the phrase ‘with my compliments’ and spits some water out, then gulps more. 

“I didn’t realize you’re such a lightweight,” Mike says, pressing the back of his hand to Jay’s sweltering forehead. “Jesus. I should have-- Shouldn’t have let you have so many.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Jay says, patting Mike’s chest. “I mean, it’s not your fault, and I’m happy.” 

“I can tell you’re happy, yeah.” Mike looks kind of wary about just how happy Jay feels.

“Mike,” Jay says, wiping water from his chin. “You have to fuck me when we get home.”

“Ah--” Mike says, glancing at the front seat. 

“Wow,” the driver says, in a friendly enough way. “That’s direct!”

Mike looks annoyed by the guy, which makes Jay laugh. 

When they reach the apartment building and get out of the car, the cold feels good on Jay’s cheeks. Actually, everything feels good. Those guys were so right. Jay is going to tell Mike all about them later, and it’s going to be like sharing the secret of encountering magical beings in an enchanted wood, but right now he’s too busy staring around at the apartment building’s surroundings as he and Mike seem to float together up to the second floor. He never realized how beautiful the icicles that hang from the window ledges are, or the way a dusting of snow glitters as it passes through the beam of one of the building’s exterior lights. Even the parking lot looks so pretty, with fresh snow blanketing the roofs of the cars. 

The smell inside the apartment is amazing, all the cooking that original Jay did yesterday hanging in the air and making him hungry. He can’t believe he said he never wanted to go home. He’s so glad to be home now that he’s tripping over his own feet on the way toward the bedroom.

“I need to drink lots of water,” he says, remembering what that one guy told him.

“No kidding,” Mike says. “Go get in bed with Jay, I’ll bring you some.”

“Lots!”

“Yeah, lots, you got it.”

The bedroom is dark. For a moment Jay is disoriented enough to not be sure which one he’s wandered into, but then his eyes adjust in the moonlight from the window over the bed. The originals have a window over their bed. Shrimp and stud have a window across from theirs. Hot Jay himself has no bed, but that’s okay, because he’s climbing into his original’s bed, shoes and all, and finding him warm and sleepy under his hands. 

“Hey, hey,” original Jay says, sitting up to groggily receive him. “What’s wrong? Where’s Mike? Are you okay?”

“I’m good, oh.” Hot Jay throws his arms around Jay’s neck and clings, breathing in the perfect smell of his skin. “God,” he says, his voice breaking as he tries to crawl more completely into Jay’s squishy lap. “You’re all warm. That feels so good.” 

“Oh god, you’re wasted.”

Jay starts to sink a little, because he hates letting the original Jay down and secretly values his opinion probably too much, but then original Jay’s arms wind around him and Mike appears with water to tell him that everything is fine, Jay, really, and all is well again. 

“How much did you let him drink?” original Jay asks, his grip on hot Jay tightening while Mike takes off hot Jay’s shoes. 

“Just four shots of vodka! That’s it! And I made him eat a huge slice of pizza first. I had no idea, uh. Has he never had hard liquor before?”

“I have,” hot Jay says, sitting back to shed his jacket. “Can we fuck now, the three of us? I’m fine, I feel great!”

“Can you even get it up?” original Jay asks, sweeping hot Jay’s now thoroughly disordered hair back with his fingers.

“Yes, yeah, feel! I’m, like, hard already.”

“Oh-- Wow, okay, you are.” 

Mike helps hot Jay out of his clothes. Original Jay still seems sleepy, but he moans with approval when they both squirm down between his legs to mouth at his dick through his flannel pants. 

“I guess you’re all wound up, too,” he says, petting Mike’s hair.

Mike says nothing, just lifts his head a little to give original Jay a look that hot Jay can hear out loud despite there being no words: I missed you, it says. Already.

“Mike has to fuck me first,” hot Jay says, tugging at the hem of the flannel pants, wanting his original to be naked like he is. “He promised.” 

“Whatever you guys want,” original Jay says, pushing his arms up over his head after Mike has stripped off his t-shirt. “Just don’t kiss me on the mouth after eating ass, Mike.” 

“That happened one time! And nobody here has the patience for ass eating, I don’t think.”

Hot Jay fully agrees. He just wants Mike’s big dick inside him as soon as possible, doesn’t even want his fingers. He makes out with his clone while Mike gets the lube, and while Mike lines up behind him and strokes fat, lube-slicked fingers down through his crack, making him shiver all over. 

“You guys smell so dirty,” Jay says. 

“Sorry,” hot Jay says, whispering this against Jay’s throat, over the steady beat of Jay’s pulse, as Mike starts to push inside him. He’s up on all fours, Mike kneeling behind him, Jay flat underneath him. 

“It’s okay,” Jay says, stroking hot Jay’s hair. “It’s not bad, just, like-- Sweat, and I don’t even know what else. General filth? It’s kinda hot.” 

“Ah fuck,” Mike says, behind him, pushing in deeper. “He’s really tight.” 

“I’m fine,” hot Jay slurs, because it just feels good, so right. He lifts his hips a little, arches his back and spreads his legs wider, lets Mike all the way inside. “God, fuck, please don’t stop--”

“Don’t come in him,” original Jay says, and when hot Jay lifts his head he can see their eyes are locked over the shivering shape of his body. “I want you, too,” Jay says, more softly. “Fuck him like he wants but save some for me, okay?”

“Nnn,” Mike says, his hands gripping tighter on hot Jay’s sides. “Yeah. I had three beers, so. I can do that.”

He sounds a little worried that he can’t. Hot Jay whines and clenches up around him, tired of waiting. Original Jay can be so greedy. He gets this all the time. Hot Jay is so deprived, and none of them even sees it. He should have run away with those drug kids. 

Then Mike starts fucking him and he’s just drifting in bliss for how good it feels, making so much noise that he knows all the Mikes and Jays in the apartment can hear it. Good, he thinks, laughing along with original Jay when he tries to shush him, reminding him of the neighbors. Hot Jay moans and laughs again, remembering that other people exist outside of this apartment that feels like his prison and his sanctuary, too. 

“I guess I’ve never seen you drunk before,” original Jay says in a whisper that feels like it’s just for him. He’s got his hand on hot Jay’s dick, jacking him too slow and gentle to get him off, but it feels good, and he’s not ready to come yet, anyway. “Am I like this?” he asks, shifting his eyes to Mike’s face. “When I’m fucked up?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, gruff and working hard on hot Jay’s ass, certainly physically exhausted after all that dancing. “You turn into my sweet little slut,” Mike says, rubbing his thumb over original Jay’s lips, which are soft and puffy from sleep and from being kissed sloppily by hot Jay. 

“I’m already that anyway,” original Jay says, pulling out all the stops. Maybe it’s because he was awakened so late at night and is unguarded, so close to sleep, or maybe he’s just trying to compete, but hot Jay has never seen him look so cute and, well-- Hot, perfect underneath him. He almost feels like he’s in love with the original Jay, comes close to having an epiphany that he is before Mike starts ramming into his prostate and his mind turns away from everything but blisteringly intense pleasure, original Jay’s hand pressed over his mouth so the neighbors won’t call the cops while he wails for how good it feels. He whimpers when he comes, and feels the world spinning again. 

Mike pants against his throat and Jay strokes his face, kisses his mouth. They take care of him until he can open his eyes and see everything where it should be, nothing tilting out of balance or going gravity-less. 

“You better not have come,” original Jay says, his eyes flicking darkly to Mike’s.

“Nuh-uh,” Mike says. He pulls out, groaning, still hard. “Come-- Come here, fucker, you’re gonna get it now.” 

Original Jay grins, kisses the corner of hot Jay’s mouth and settles him on his side before hurrying into Mike’s arms. 

Hot Jay is suddenly very tired but also wants to be involved. He hoists himself up with shaking arms and laps at Jay’s bouncing cock while Mike fucks into him from behind, holding him up against his chest, both of them up on their knees. Original Jay tries to stay quiet-- Hot Jay can see it, feel it --but he can’t, and when he comes he cries Mike’s name out in an almost panicked-sounding, high-pitched way that hot Jay and the others have heard through the walls many times. 

“Can I come in you now, Jay?” Mike says, sounding unhinged, almost growling this out as he continues to grind himself into Jay. “Hmm? You want my come in there, don’t you? Greedy fucking slut, tell me.” 

“Yes,” Jay says, grinning, his head lolling back onto Mike’s shoulder. “Do it, I want it. S’mine.”

Hot Jay slumps down onto the mattress and peers up at them, watching Mike’s face as he comes inside his Jay, arms locked tight around his chest. Mike sort of winces like it hurts and then sighs like everything’s okay again, his face going slack and happy, pretty eyelashes fluttering against Jay’s cheek while he holds him close and unloads inside him, deep. 

Sex with them is always like this. Hot Jay worms into the original’s arms while Mike puts on Jay’s too-small robe so he can cross the frigid passage of the hallway outside this sex-warmed room and get them a towel to clean up with. 

“Hey,” hot Jay whispers while Mike is still gone, washing his hands or his dick, water running. 

“Hey,” original Jay says tiredly, stroking his cheek. “You okay?”

“Yes, I-- Wanted to say, Jay. Listen. I know I’m mean sometimes, but I love you, okay? I really do.”

“Aww. You’re a surprisingly cute drunk. We love you, too.” 

This ‘we’ doesn’t bother hot Jay at the moment, but it will later. He closes his eyes and rubs his face in against Jay’s fuzzy chest, hoping they’ll let him sleep in the middle. He moans soft when Mike cleans him up, rubbing a damp towel between his lube-sticky ass cheeks. Then he’s asleep, not sure if he’s in the middle or not. He’s warm anyway, and feeling good, though less good than he did when he seemed to dissipate into sound and light at that club and when the perfect friction and fullness in his ass felt like transforming into pure energy that throbbed between Mike and Jay, who maintained their solid forms around him to keep him from disappearing for good. 

When he wakes up late the next morning he’s warm and pressed between them. They gave him the middle, could tell that he needed it.

He still feels worse than he ever has in his life. 

Original Jay stirs a little but doesn’t wake as hot Jay climbs over him, freezing cold and feeling like some essential element he always took for granted has been rapidly drained out of him. He puts on Jay’s discarded flannel pants and one of Mike’s sweaters that’s lying on the floor, stuffs his feet into Jay’s slippers and goes into the kitchen to gulp water until he feels sick from it. 

He looks for the laptop, hands shaking, and goes to the other bedroom when he can’t find it in the living room or the tent, which is unzipped, nerd Mike and chubby Jay nowhere to be found. He’s alarmed when he finds the bedroom door open and the bed empty, too. 

Before returning to the originals to ask where the fuck everybody is, he sits gingerly at the desk and wakes the computer by jiggling the mouse, every movement feeling like it might break him. It’s not even a physical pain, though his head hurts a little and his legs are sore, like he ran ten miles last night. That he can deal with, but something else feels-- Wrong. 

He does a search for ‘e party drug’ and side effects. Warnings that chill his bones in a belated way unspool across scolding medical articles, and he’s not sure if he’s relieved or not when he reads that one of the ‘coming down’ side effects is depression. 

_These effects of coming down usually begin the day after taking ecstasy and can last for several days._

“Oh,” he says out loud, dragging his hand over his dry lips. He can’t feel like this for several days. He can’t. 

He sits there slumped at the computer for a while, until he realizes he’s starving. He goes into the kitchen, dumps two huge scoops of leftover Thanksgiving stuffing into a bowl, slops some disgusting-looking concealed gravy on top of it and puts in the microwave. While it heats up he stands staring out the kitchen window at the courtyard below. It’s empty. All the clones seem to have gone off to do something without him, probably in protest of his big night out. 

Well, fuck them, he thinks, blinking moisture in his eyes away. He can handle this depression shit without them, and it will go away. It’s just chemical, and makes sense: use up all your feel-good energy at once, deal with the consequences when it’s depleted, until it comes back. It will come back, he thinks, grinding his teeth as he listens to the microwave beeping. It will, even if what he’s feeling right now tells him with cackling certainly that hell no it won’t, ever.

He eats the stuffing at the kitchen table, hand shaking. It’s exactly as delicious as it smelled last night, but he still feels like shit during and after woofing it down. He thinks of getting back into bed with Mike and Jay, but he knows he’ll find them curled around each other, not missing him. It’s almost one thirty in the afternoon, and they hardly ever get to sleep late. He can’t even make himself stand in the doorway of the other bedroom, haunted by the sense that he’s not welcome there anymore. His phone is in Jay’s coat pocket in the originals’ bedroom, hopefully. He leaves it there and crawls into the tent, zipping it up behind him. 

There’s only one thing that will make him feel probably not much better, but he knows he needs it anyway and waits, a battered thing at the pit of him perking up every time he hears footsteps out in the hallway outside the apartment, then wilting when they pass.

He’s almost asleep by the time chubby Jay finally unzips the tent and pokes his head inside, his cheeks pink from cold and nerd Mike lingering right behind him. 

Hot Jay doesn’t lift his head from his folded hands, which are pressed under his cheek. He’s curled up on his side, knees pulled in toward his chest. He meets chubby Jay’s eyes, knowing he looks just as shitty as he feels, and sees chubby Jay registering all of this with surprise, alarm, and then sympathy. 

“What’s he doing in there?” nerd Mike asks. “Is he okay?”

“He’s-- Yeah. Just, go take a shower without me, I’m gonna--”

Chubby Jay climbs into the tent and zips it up behind him. Nerd Mike pads away obediently. 

“Hey,” chubby Jay says, crawling over to hot Jay. “Oh god. What happened?”

Hot Jay shakes his head. He’s going to explain, but he needs a minute. He makes a grateful noise under his breath when chubby Jay understands this and slides down to wrap around him, tucking him in tight against his chest. He’s so perfectly soft, it makes hot Jay want to weep pathetically. 

“I ate a bunch of leftovers,” hot Jay mutters, eyes closed, as if that’s the problem. 

“Oh?” chubby Jay pets his hair. “This looks good,” he says, gentle. “Your haircut.” 

“Mhm. I guess.”

They lie there for a while, clinging to each other atop the mess of tent bedding and listening to the originals puttering around in the kitchen, making coffee and a late breakfast, laughing together. 

“I’m assuming they don’t know about whatever’s going on?” chubby Jay says, whispering. 

“Nn, not really.”

“Gonna tell me, or?”

Hot Jay sighs. He paws at the collar of chubby Jay’s shirt and pushes his fingers inside so that they’re resting over the hollow of his throat in a fist. He feels possessive, like if nerd Mike tries poking his head in here he’ll bite it off. 

“I took something,” hot Jay says, mumbling this out quietly, guiltily, eyes still shut. “At the club.”

“Some-- Thing? Like, you stole it?”

Hot Jay manages a tiny sniff of a laugh at that. What a dork. He clutches tighter at the back of chubby Jay’s t-shirt, making a desperate fist in the fabric there, too. He wears his shirts too big; it doesn’t flatter him. 

“I took a drug, Jay,” he says, lifting his face to meet his eyes. “And it was excellent, I felt great, all night, and Mike didn’t even know. Even Jay couldn’t tell, when I got home. They just thought I was drunk. And I’m fine, but the next day after you take this thing, you feel like shit. It depletes your serotonin. Apparently. This is the worst I’ve ever felt.” 

Chubby Jay raises his eyebrows slightly. Maybe he’s remembering the other time hot Jay felt the worst in his life, after he was rescued from that basement, and how chubby Jay had to hold him for two days straight after.

Well, maybe he didn’t have to. Nobody asked him to, not even hot Jay. But he did.

“Please don’t do things like that,” chubby Jay says, cupping his face, looking so sad that it makes hot Jay’s eyes water again. “Okay? Don’t do that again. That’s so dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Why-- Ah! Was big Mike mean or something? Was the whole thing a letdown?”

“No, no. It was lovely. Everything I wanted.”

“Then why--?”

“I don’t know, okay? I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

He moans and buries his face against Jay’s chubby chest again. He can feel chubby Jay wanting to scold him some more, but he holds it in and strokes hot Jay’s hair instead, sighing. The originals move to the living room and Jay complains that he can’t find the laptop while Mike puts on some dumb show with loud commercials.

“You’ll be okay,” chubby Jay whispers after a while. 

“I know,” hot Jay mumbles. “It’s just chemical. Like I said. Temporary.”

Chubby Jay wraps a leg around his middle like he knows at least some of that isn’t true, cinches him in even closer like proximity can fix it.

And it does, sort of, until hot Jay wakes up and nerd Mike is in the tent, too, whispering to chubby Jay, who has rolled onto his back. He still has his arm around hot Jay’s shoulders, and has pulled a blanket up over him, too. 

At first hot Jay thinks they must be talking about him, but then he hears Star Trek names and realizes they’re talking about that fucking show, that nerd Mike is keeping his Jay entertained while he provides shelter for this other Jay who doesn’t belong here. 

“Hey,” chubby Jay says, moving along with hot Jay when he sits up and rubs at his face. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” he says, lying. His stomach hurts. Everything else just feels hollow. “Where are shrimp and stud, by the way?”

“Shrimp badgered the originals into giving them money to go ice skating. He said it was only fair, since you got to go on a date.”

“Ice skating,” hot Jay mutters miserably. He pictures shrimp falling on his ass on the ice, laughing, stud Mike helping him up and holding his little gloved hands. He glances over at nerd Mike, who doesn’t look thrilled that he’s still here in the tent. “What about you two?”

“We had brunch this morning,” nerd Mike says. He sounds proud of himself, like this means he’s a real boy now. “In the city. It was slam packed and we had to wait almost an hour for a table,” he adds, eyes bright, like that was the appeal. “And the coffee was so much better than here.” 

“You don’t even like coffee,” chubby Jay says, but he grins over at nerd Mike like he knows he’s really just speaking on behalf of his Jay’s opinion on the brunch coffee. 

“Well then,” hot Jay says, climbing over them. “I’m gonna go shower.” 

“You can stay,” chubby Jay says, soft, like nerd Mike won’t hear.

“No, thank you. Thanks, just-- I’ll feel better after I’m clean.”

He stands in the shower for a long time, thinking of how he used to rag on chubby Jay for doing so when he was depressed. He deserves this, he thinks, running his hands through his wet, newly shorn hair. Maybe he’s becoming a real boy, too. Maybe he has to go through this shit in order to do so, but where will he land when he transforms? None of them want them the way they want each other. It’s hilarious, considering how he used to preen like he could take them or leave them. Where did he think he was going to go?

“Those two are still off ice skating?” he says when he’s dressed, the bedroom still empty and the originals still lounging on the couch, big Mike dozing with his head tipped back on the cushions and Jay playing on his phone while the muted TV flashes images of a volcano erupting. 

“Uh-huh,” original Jay says, focused on his phone. He’s frowning, which probably means he’s correcting someone on Twitter, thumbs flying. “They were gonna go to a coffee shop after, to get hot cocoa or something. I think they have the laptop, too. They’d better have it. Eat some leftovers, okay?” 

“I did already. I’m going for a walk.”

Jay looks up from his phone. Mike snorts a little in his sleep as if sensing some Jay-related disturbance but doesn’t wake. 

“What?” hot Jay snaps, already buttoning up Jay’s coat. “It’s fine, I need some air. I’m hungover.”

“Are you sure, uh--” Jay jostles Mike. “I could get him to walk with you--”

“I’ll be fine on my own,” hot Jay says, shaking his head when Mike wakes only enough to shift over and rest his rosy cheek on Jay’s shoulder, settling in for sleep again. Chubby Jay unzips the tent and sticks his head out, looking worried.

“I could come with you?” he says. 

“Everybody lay off, I’m just going to do a few laps around the building. I’ll be right back, and I have my phone.” 

It does feel a little good to be outside, alone, on a cold grey afternoon that’s already darkening. Maybe it isn’t ‘good’ so much as ‘fitting his mood.’ Car sounds in the distance make him flinch, and he remembers that anxiety and paranoia are two potential come-down effects of this drug, too.

He finds a bench and sits. When he realizes he’s scanning the parking lot for any sign of shrimp and stud returning, he scowls and pulls out his phone, texts Simon.

Jbman913: hey do you want to video chat. I’m solo for once

As usual, Simon responds immediately. Jay tries to smile at his thirst. 

_Sayssimon1 is requesting a video call connection_

“Hey!” he says when Jay accepts. Simon is smiling and sweet-looking, outdoors somewhere. Jay recognizes seagull cries in the background. He knows those from Lake Michigan, which the originals took them to a couple of times before the weather got bad. “I’m at the beach!” Simon says when Jay just stares at him, not even sure what he wants from this interaction.

“Of course you are,” Jay says. 

“Your hair looks good! Did you get it cut?”

“Yesterday, yeah. Thanks.”

“Are you okay?” Simon says. “You look kinda-- Oh, jesus, hey. I wanted to apologize for what I said last time we talked. About money. That was so fucking awkward and weird. I don’t even know where that came from.”

“It’s okay,” hot Jay says. “I don’t know why I said that about being poor. That was stupid. We’re fine-- I’m fine.”

“How was the club thing?” 

“It was great.” Jay moans and rubs his face, lets Simon see how sad and alone he is, sitting on a park bench outside a dumpy apartment complex while Simon is on the glittering shores of the Pacific Ocean. Why even lie to this guy? “Actually, it was kind of fucked up,” he says.

“Oh no. Why?”

“Nothing, just-- I took ecstasy, uh. Have you ever tried it?”

“Oh yeah,” Simon says, wincing with what looks like real sympathy. “Back in college. The day after convinced me to never do it again. Pretty rough.” 

“That’s where I am now,” Jay says, cheered a little by the fact that he understands, has been here. “And it’s worse because, like-- That guy I went out with, we have some real weird baggage, and I ended up having a threesome with him and his boyfriend after, and. I don’t know, I feel so shitty.” 

Simon’s eyebrows quirk and he makes a hurt face. 

“That sucks, man,” he says. “I’d give you a big hug if I could.” 

“I bet you would, pervert.” Jay winces after saying so, and Simon looks confused, then fakes a laugh. “Sorry-- Sorry. I don’t know why I say anything.” 

“Me either,” Simon says, smiling for real again. 

“And the other thing that’s weird about all this,” Jay says, sitting forward and holding the phone low, in both hands, though he knows this angle is unflattering, “Is that I took these drugs from strangers last night, and I did this after I had a really, really bad experience being roofied earlier this year.”

“Jesus, man,” Simon says. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“It was okay, mostly, I mean, my friends saved me before anything happened, but it was so, just-- It really made me afraid to even leave my apartment for months. And I’m still fucked up about it, honestly.”

“Well, of course. How could you not be?”

“Sorry. I don’t know why I’m calling you, saying all this shit.” 

“It’s okay, man. I like talking to you. You can vent to me whenever.” 

Jay says nothing, trying to study Simon’s face to see if he means it. He looks sincere, has always made Jay feel okay in a way that the other guys he flirted with online didn’t. 

“I mean it,” Simon says more softly, after Jay has been quiet for a while, staring into the video on his phone and trying to will himself into being on that beach, in the sun, without this feeling hanging over his head for several days’ worth of hours ahead. “I really like you.”

“I like you, too,” Jay says. “You’re just real far away, so. I’m not sure what the point is.”

“Maybe there doesn’t have to be a point. We can just like each other. And we can talk, and. I’ll be back in the midwest eventually, so. Just sayin’.” 

Jay manages a weak little smile. He feels a little bit of west coast sunlight peeking through when Simon smiles back at him. 

He goes back inside, expecting shrimp and and stud Mike to have returned, but they’re still gone. Nobody else seems concerned about this, so Jay goes into their bedroom, shuts the door behind him and collapses face first onto the empty bed. 

He didn’t have any dreams the night before, drifting weightless on drugs and sex until he woke, and they come back to collect bigtime when he drifts off on the bed. The first one is about losing big Mike in the club and finding himself outside, on packed streets, in the middle of some kind of sinister parade where large, shaggy figures in twisted masks ride on floats down the street and worshippers in robes cheer aggressively on the sidelines, pushing Jay toward the floats when he tries to fight his way free, afraid he’ll get crushed by the massive wheels on the floats. The figures riding on them are also cracking whips overhead, roaring. 

He doesn’t quite wake but fights his way out of that nightmare and dreams that he’s swimming in Lake Michigan when he suddenly realizes the water is freezing, it’s winter and icy and he shouldn’t be out here. He turns back for shore, expecting the clones and originals to still be there where he left them, on towels and under umbrellas, but the beach is empty except for one hooded figure who’s watching him, waiting for him to tire so he can strike. 

There’s a blurry segment of nonsense and then he finds himself locked into a mortuary drawer with his hands and legs tied down, gagged in the dark. The worst part of this dream isn’t his pitiful struggles and muffled attempts to scream but his sense that there are people outside who know he’s in here and won’t help him, because the drawer is one of hundreds that line a massive wall and tower up to the ceiling, each one filled with an identical clone, none of them of much concern for the overseers outside, even if one unlucky clone did wake up while the others slumber obviously on their trip through space toward some indifferent buyer who will do whatever he wants with them--

“Jay, Jay, stop, it’s okay!”

He thrashes once more before recognizing shrimp Jay’s worried little face hovering over his, and when he turns, wild-eyed, he sees stud Mike is here, too, leaning against him in bed, both of them trying to wake him or calm him down or maybe just stop whatever pathetic noises he was making as he fought his way out of that nightmare. 

“Hey, hey,” stud Mike says, soft, tucking his arm across hot Jay’s heaving chest. “You’re all right, it was just a bad dream.”

He turns to shrimp Jay, still breathless with horror from that last dream, and sees that he understands how ridiculous this statement is in a way that stud Mike can’t. Shrimp Jay knows how bad dreams can be. 

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice a little shaky and very small. He throws his skinny arm across Jay’s shoulders and smashes his eyes shut, cups his hand over Jay’s ear and presses their faces together with a little whine like it hurts to do so, or hurts to have waited so long. His nose is cold; they must have just gotten back. 

“Fuck,” hot Jay says when he can speak, lifting his hands uncertainly to clutch at their arms. “Shit, sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” stud Mike says. 

Shrimp Jay just nods and lets hot Jay roll over in his arms to cling hard. He’s clinging, too, and doing a little swallowed sob thing that makes hot Jay’s eyes burn while he hides them in the shrimp’s sweater, which smells like frost and cocoa. 

“We missed you,” shrimp Jay says when the sobbing thing has calmed and his chest is less jittery against hot Jay’s wet, hidden face. He kisses hot Jay’s forehead, strokes his hair. Mike is close behind him, too, warm and huge and rubbing his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Mike says. He kisses the back of hot Jay’s head and touches him like he’s some tender, recovering little thing, like he knows. “Take us to the club next time.”

“I heard you went ice skating,” hot Jay says, pretending he’s not crying like a baby because he knows they’ll let him off the hook. 

“I was terrible at it,” shrimp Jay says. He hiccups a wet little laugh. “We gave up after like twenty minutes to go sit in a warm coffee shop and write Star Trek fanfic on the laptop.” 

“Sounds fun,” hot Jay says, though to him it would be a nightmare. He would be great at ice skating, probably, and it sounds like good exercise. “Glad you got to have a date.” 

“We’re glad you did, too,” shrimp Jay says, petting his cheek. “Sorry I was mean about it.” 

“It’s fine. I deserve it, when you’re mean.” 

“Nooo,” shrimp Jay says, wrapping his leg around hot Jay as well, in a way that makes him grin, because it was chubby Jay’s default reaction to hot Jay feeling extra sorry for himself, too. “No, no, no. I shouldn’t get so-- It was a bad few days, honestly. We really missed you a lot.”

“Why.”

“Why!” shrimp Jay pulls back to give him an incredulous, offended look. “Because you’re our Jay and we love you!” 

Jay almost rolls his eyes, but only because he’s embarrassed by how different the ‘we’ feels coming from him, from them, good and right and needed. He manages to keep his eyes unrolled and lets them kiss him for a while before he confides in them about the club, the drug, and how low he’s feeling now because of depleted brain chemicals and potentially some other things. Shrimp Jay gasps at all the right parts of the story about his night out, scandalized and impressed, and stud Mike moans low in a way that hot Jay can feel against his back with Mike spooned around him. Mike also tightens his grip on Jay’s bicep every time he does it, and it feels like a promise that he’s never letting hot Jay make a bad decision without him again. 

The three of them emerge together for dinner, which is more Thanksgiving leftovers. Hot Jay reverts to eating mostly lean turkey but takes a bigger scoop of green been casserole than he did the night before and steals a bite from stud Mike’s dinner roll, wrinkling his nose and deeming the bland mouthful of bread not worth it. He has a single glass of box wine and brushes the gross purple color off his lips and teeth directly after dinner. 

Both Jay clones file in and join him for teeth brushing time, resuming their usual routine, and hot Jay realizes he’s starting to feel okay again when they flank him at the sink, chattering about the last DS9 episode they all watched together and what they think will happen next. Hot Jay really missed this, stupidly. But it’s okay to love stupid little things like this, because they’re somehow simultaneously the big, important things that give him a sense of real belonging. He’d be so adrift without them. 

*


	4. Chapter 4

It’s two weeks from Christmas and Mike is just beginning to think maybe they can really hack this living with all the clones in Jay’s tiny apartment thing long term when they come home from their shift at the VCR repair shop and find an eviction notice taped to the front door.

“Oh, what the fuck,” Jay says, his shoulders dropping like just looking at it has already made him give up. “We’ve never even been late on rent!” 

“It’s got to be a misunderstanding,” Mike says, ripping the thing angrily off the door. “What time is it? Donny’s probably still in his office, let’s go confront him.” 

Jay unlocks the apartment door and pokes his head inside. It’s a few hours before their usual dinnertime and shrimp Jay is the only one in the living room, playing around on the laptop, probably editing his Christmas present movie. 

“Did you guys see this?” Jay asks, snatching the eviction notice out of Mike’s hand and holding it up, both of them still standing in the doorway. 

“Huh?” shrimp Jay shuts the laptop and squints. “A piece of paper?”

“Did Donny come knocking, earlier? The landlord guy with the white beard?”

“Uhh, I dunno. I’ve been working on my--” He cranes his neck to make sure stud Mike hasn’t appeared behind them. “My thing,” he says, quietly. “I had my headphones in, so. And we’re not supposed to answer the door for anyone, I thought? If you guys aren’t here? Not even him, right?”

“Right. It’s fine,” Mike says, though it almost definitely isn’t. “Where the hell’s everyone else?” 

“Nerd and chubby are still at work. I made hot Jay take a walk with our Mike so I could work on his present in secret. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mike says, not wanting all the clones to start freaking out. He can already feel Jay panicking, his eyes gone spacey and his breath coming quick. He’s been about one crisis away from a full breakdown since the summer, but Mike is going to fix this, it’ll be fine. “We’ll be right back,” he says, tugging Jay out into the hall. “Don’t, uh. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” shrimp Jay says, but he sounds like he is, a little, now. 

“I knew it,” Jay says as they head down to the basement level of the building, where Donny’s airless, tobacco-scented office sits beside the laundry room. “I knew he was gonna throw us out if-- Fuck!”

“If what?”

“If we weren’t more careful! We’ve been letting the clones come and go as they please, and you know exactly how discreet they are about-- Fucking everything. Sex noises especially.”

Mike swallows heavily and nods, ducking the look of fury that he gets from Jay, probably because Jay can sense that Mike just thought about the fact that Jay is loud during sex, too.

“He can’t throw us out just for some noise complaints,” Mike says. “We’ll sue.”

“With what money? Lawyers are expensive, Mike!”

“Okay, shh shh, calm down, let’s just talk to him.” 

In a way that seems especially cruel right now, Donny the landlord kind of looks like a miniature Santa Claus with a chain smoking problem. He has a trim white beard that he somehow keeps from yellowing, despite the fact that Mike has almost never seen him without a lit cig between his fingers, and beady blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“I warned you kids,” he says, gesturing to them with his cigarette when they’re standing in front of his desk. “I told you, if you don’t get the noise under control, you’re out.”

“That’s not legal,” Mike says, snarling. “There needs to be, like-- Proceedings, Formal warnings, in paper. Right, Jay?” he asks, elbowing him. 

Jay just stares into the middle distance, holding the eviction notice and looking like he wants to curl up and die on the filthy floor of Donny’s office. 

“Oh, you want to talk about legality?” Donny says, standing to his full height of maybe five and a half feet, fists on his desk. “Okay, let’s talk about the fact that you got like a dozen guys living in that apartment, and how anything over four violates the building code, not to mention voids your rental contract.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mike says, feeling his cheeks take on an incriminating flush. “It’s just me and Jay.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? Think I don’t have eyes? These glasses work fine, boys, and I’ve counted seven. Fuck knows there’s probably more I haven’t seen! I know you think you’re real clever bringing subletters who look like you in here, but I’m well aware that they ain’t all the same two guys, and I’m done with the whole fuckin’ circus. You’re out by Sunday or I call the cops.” 

“Today’s Friday,” Jay says, wide-eyed. 

“Yeah, and I’m generously giving you two days to pack up and get out. So get to it, and get out of my office. We’re done here, unless you want me to bring the Milwaukee PD up to your place and let them hash out whatever the hell brothel shitshow you’ve got going on in there. I don’t want to know the first goddamn thing about what you fellas get up to, I just know you’re not doing it in my building anymore.”

Jay turns and leaves just as Mike opens his mouth to say that Donny has no proof. Mike follows him out, figuring this is probably the smarter move, considering that involving the cops with anything to do with the clones would be the end of everything. But what the fuck are they gonna do?

“Jay,” Mike says, grabbing his arm to get him to stop walking. “Why are you so quiet?”

“Because what the hell good would yelling do?” Jay yanks his arm free and heads for the stairs. “Just. Let me handle this, Mike. I’m formulating a plan.”

“Oh yeah? Gonna share it with me?”

“Let me think for a goddamn minute and maybe I will.” 

Mike scowls, annoyed by the fact that Jay has appointed himself the leader of their household, even as he deeply doesn’t envy the role. He just doesn’t like feeling like he’s another hapless charge Jay has to take care of, and like he’s been asleep at the wheel when things like this happen and Jay is the one who fixes them. 

“What’s wrong?” shrimp Jay asks when they return and Jay goes immediately into the bathroom to turn the shower on, locking the door behind him to communicate he doesn’t want Mike’s company right now.

“Nothing,” Mike says, going to the fridge for a beer.

“You’re lying. Something’s real wrong, I can tell.” 

Nerd Mike and chubby Jay arrive home before shrimp Jay can further interrogate Mike, who takes his beer into the bedroom and shuts the door behind him, almost locking it before he considers that would mean locking his Jay out, too, and leaving him naked in the hallway. Jay takes such a long time in the shower that Mike finishes his beer, changes out of his work clothes and leaves the bedroom again, annoyed by him. 

In the living room, Mike browses on the laptop for nearby places to rent. Everything is expensive or looks like a death trap. Jay emerges dressed in a sweater and jeans and goes right to fixing dinner with his usual helpers, ignoring Mike. Stud Mike and hot Jay return from their walk and ignore him, too, joining the others in the kitchen. 

Mike feels like Jay’s equal partner in most ways, except when things like this happen and Jay shuts down like he’s alone with the problem. It’s really fucking insulting. Mike helps himself to two more beers while the Jays cook dinner together, and he’s in a bad mood by the time they all sit down to eat together. 

“So,” Jay says, grabbing Mike’s wrist under the table like they’re in this together after all. “I have some good news, everybody.”

The clones all stop in the midst of whatever chatter they were doing and look at Jay as if they can sense he’s putting a cheerful coat of paint on something that might otherwise be seen as a disaster. 

“I, uh.” Jay clears his throat and gulps from his beer, then sets it down hard. “Even Mike doesn’t know about this, but I have a family property way out in the country that we can use for our residence. It’s, umm, a bit of a fixer upper, but it’s huge, an old farmhouse with four bedrooms and a lot of land. So we’d have privacy, too. So. What do you guys think? I thought maybe we could go ahead and move out there before Christmas, so we could get settled and, um, chop down our own Christmas tree, and, you know. Like, we could leave this weekend, maybe.”

“Why can’t you just tell them the truth?” Mike asks, letting this thunder out of him before he can think better of it.

Everyone turns to him, the clones all looking varying degrees of terrified and Jay shocked, then furious. 

“It is the truth,” Jay says, jaw tight. “I haven’t brought it up before now, because, well. I hated that house when I used to live there, but. It’s been selfish of me, I realize. Because it’s just sitting there, abandoned. And I think I can get a loan from my parents if I promise to fix it up a little,” he adds, mumbling that last part. 

“Does this have something to do with the landlord?” shrimp Jay asks, his eyes glassy with distress and confusion. 

“Yes,” Mike says. “And I don’t see why you guys shouldn’t know it. They’re not children,” he says to Jay, who is growing increasingly red-eared with rage. 

“Fine,” Jay says, holding Mike’s angry stare. “We’re being thrown out. We have less than two days to vacate. And I don’t want to live in this old house, because I lived there when I was a teenager and the town it’s in made me want to be dead, but guess I’ve got no choice now, so! Finish your dinners and start packing.”

He pushes away from the table hard enough to upset his beer, but hot Jay catches it before it can spill all over the table. He also catches Mike’s gaze as Jay storms off, and makes a ‘yikes’ face, either at the situation or at the way Mike is handling it. 

“What about our jobs?” chubby Jay asks. “How far is this place from the city?”

“It’s an hour and a half away,” Mike says, because he knows Jay is talking about Orfordville. “I’m gonna go, uh. Talk to him. Nobody panic. Everything’s gonna be okay.” 

He’s relieved to find the bedroom door unlocked, not even pulled shut all the way, and he pushes it open cautiously, like Jay might explode if Mike doesn’t handle him correctly from here on out. He still doesn’t understand why Jay wanted to lie to the clones about why they had to leave, but he gets that this is a big, upsetting thing to process, especially as it apparently involves returning to Orfordville and leaving behind everything Jay loves about the city he was able to escape to after high school. 

“I didn’t realize your family still owns that place,” Mike says, sitting beside Jay on the bed. Jay is rolled away from him, curled in on himself, but he doesn’t flinch away when Mike rubs his shoulder. “Sorry,” Mike says, softly. “I just wish. If your plan involved not telling them, uh. I wish you’d have told me ahead of time. You’re gonna have to let me help you with this, you know?”

“I know,” Jay says. His voice is small. Mike stretches out behind him and curves around him, pulls him in close. Jay lets out a shuddering sigh. “I’ve known for a while now that we were gonna have to do this. It’s insane, trying to live here with them. Even with three of them working now. They’re making peanuts, we’re committing extremely dangerous levels of fraud by having them work those jobs and collect paychecks in our names, and the house is just sitting there. Waiting for me. I gotta get over it, I guess.” 

Mike kisses the back of Jay’s neck and tries to decide what he needs to say right now to make Jay feel better about having to move back to this place that has made him visibly shudder when he’s described it to Mike in the past: the rednecks, the bad memories of being an undersized weirdo kid in a place like that, the time the only video store within an hour of him closed down when he was in high school. 

“It’s been twenty-two years,” Mike says, gently, rubbing his arm. “Maybe it’s changed.”

“Yeah, for the worse. No, it’s fine. I’m over it. We’ll make it work.”

Mike holds him until he drifts into a tense nap and later brings him dinner in bed. Jay is still mopey but he’s also sweet in Mike’s arms, letting Mike take care of him. The clones all congregate together in the other bedroom to whisper about what’s going on, and they get quiet when Mike appears in the doorway.

“Is Jay okay?” chubby Jay asks.

“Yeah, he’s just sad about having to leave Milwaukee. But he wants to protect you guys, and we will. That’s more important. He’ll be in better spirits tomorrow. He, uh. Loves packing.”

That last part is oddly true, one of those things about Jay that Mike can only boggle about. Jay wakes up at the crack of dawn to rouse the clones and start organizing everyone into pairs that will handle one room each after he and Mike make a special Saturday trip to the VCR repair shop to steal every cardboard box in the pace. Fortunately they’ve let them pile up over the years out of laziness. By dinnertime they’re all packed, and Mike has rented a U-Haul to stuff everything into, his head still spinning from how fast this is happening. 

“Should we just leave tonight?” Mike asks, when the only things left unpacked are the beds and the tent in the living room. 

“No,” Jay says. “We’ll go at five o’clock in the morning. I told Donny, and he’s fine with us leaving then. Trust me, uh. You don’t want to see this place for the first time at night.”

Mike’s eyebrows go up. He glances at nerd Mike, who also looks alarmed and somewhat intrigued by this information. 

Jay doesn’t want to have sex on their last night in the apartment, and Mike doesn’t blame him, but also kinda wishes they could do it one last time. They’ve had a lot of good sex here, but he supposes the creaking old farmhouse won’t kill Jay’s sex drive entirely. If it does, Mike will take him elsewhere. He can’t live without Jay’s sex drive.

“I should warn you,” Jay whispers when they’re lying awake together while wind and freezing rain blasts the window over their bed, both of them unable to sleep. “There’s no working electricity. There’s a generator that I think still works, but. We’re going to have to get some major work done. I talked to my mom this morning. She’s gonna give me a loan to fix the place up.”

“Yay!” Mike says, and he cringes at the look Jay gives him. 

“I hate borrowing from them,” Jay says. “It’s like admitting defeat.”

“I’m sure they don’t see it that way.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know them.”

Mike makes a noise under his breath, because he’s starting to wonder if he ever will. Jay has the clones as an excuse to even further detach from his family and not at least introduce them to the Mike who is his boyfriend, but now he’s moving into their old house, and what are they going to do if they meet the clones? Turn them into the authorities for being adorable extra Jays? Doubtful. 

“The plumbing should be fine, and I think the hot water heater still works,” Jay says. “So we’ve got that.”

“We’ve got a lot,” Mike says. He’s not accustomed to being an optimist, but he’s been giving it a whirl since he finally landed the love of his life in his bed every night. “Hell, we’ve got five farm hands, come spring.”

“Oh god,” Jay says, pulling the front of Mike’s shirt over his face and groaning. “You don’t know this, but my biggest fear as a kid was becoming a farmer.” 

Mike snorts. Jay lifts his face to glare at him, then smiles a little. 

“I guess it’s okay if you have to be my farmer husband,” he says. 

“Husband?” Mike says, his voice pitching up hopefully. 

“Oh, yeah, I should mention. I consider us married now. Anyway, goodnight.”

Jay rolls over and Mike waits for him to say he’s joking and start laughing at the look on Mike’s face, but he just lies stiffly under Mike’s encircling arm and breathes in nervous little huffs until he’s asleep for real. 

“I love you,” Mike says, whispering this into the dark, against the back of Jay’s sleeping head, like an answering wedding vow that Jay didn’t ask for. It can’t hurt, Mike thinks, and he’s grinning when he falls asleep, ready as hell to live in a haunted farmhouse and keep Jay’s secret sensitive feelings safe from the ghosts of bad memories there.

In the morning they’re all still tired and a little shell-shocked by what’s happening as they move the beds out to the U-Haul. They have enough helping hands that it’s quick work, and by five thirty they’re on the road, Mike driving the U-Haul with hot Jay seated beside him, drinking from a fancy Starbucks coffee. Jay treated everyone to their drink of choice on the way out of town, warning that Orfordville doesn’t even have a Starbucks. The rest of the clones are in the car driven by Jay, sipping from their own expensive special occasion coffees. The total for their order of six drinks was almost forty dollars after tip. Mike didn’t get anything. 

“I have to confess,” hot Jay says when they’re on the highway. “I’m kind of excited about this.”

“I’m surprised,” Mike says. “Won’t you miss, uh. Clubbing, and all that?”

“I mean, I loved it,” hot Jay says, reaching over to rub Mike’s leg appreciatively. “But, uhh. Maybe the city brings out some of my not best impulses.”

Mike snorts and looks over at him. He’s wearing Jay’s red and black checked lumberjack hat with the flaps over the years and looks extremely cute. 

“Yeah, you’re gonna love country living,” Mike says, sarcastic. “But I’m excited, too. It’s an adventure.” 

“Are you guys going to keep your jobs? That commute would be a lot for what you make.” 

Mike gives him a look for the comment on their salaries, though he’s right.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Me and Jay are taking the next two weeks off. Saved up our vacation time all year to do that anyway.”

“Why?” 

“Because we both like Christmas and bumming around during the last two weeks of the year.”

“Oh, Christmas,” hot Jay says, muttering. “Isn’t that just a big marketing thing to get people to spend money?”

“Sorta,” Mike concedes. “But it’s something else, too, even if you’re like us and don’t give a fuck about religion. It just reminds us of childhood, I guess.”

“Ah, well, no wonder I can’t relate. What’d you ever get for your Jay, by the way?”

“Nothing,” Mike says, wilting. “All the cool stuff I was thinking about was way too expensive. I’d have gladly spent the money, but since we share a household now he’d have a fit if I spent that much without his consent, even for his gift. So I kept putting it off, and now I got nothin’.” 

“I’m sure he won’t care, considering the circumstances.” 

Mike grunts, not sure that’s true. Mike cares, anyway. He’d wanted to get Jay the perfect present, but nothing was good enough, unless it was an authentic prop that cost a thousand dollars they don’t have. 

They reach the old farmhouse a little bit after seven o’clock in the morning, and even under a cloudless, sunny morning sky, Mike can see what Jay meant about not wanting to arrive here at night. He parks the U-Haul and joins hot Jay in craning his neck to look up at the place, neither of them moving to get out. 

The house looks extremely haunted, to the point that it’s almost comically visual shorthand for ‘haunted.’ It’s two stories tall, big and bulky with a huge front porch, all the paint peeling terribly and the porch sagging a little in front. The roof looks to be in similar shape. Mike can tell by looking at it that it leaks.

“Wow,” hot Jay says, blinking up at the place with his upper lip lifted under his perfectly trimmed mustache. “Is it, like. Safe? In there?”

“Of course,” Mike says, though he thinks the real answer is something closer to ‘relatively,’ in the sense that it’s safer than living on the streets. 

He gets out of the U-Haul and walks over to his Jay, who is staring up at the house with his hands on his hips and a look in his eyes like he dares this house to try to break him. He startles a little when Mike settles a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh,” Jay says, turning to look back at the house. “Well. Here it is. Let’s unload and return the truck. There’s a U-Haul drop off near the Wal-Mart. We’re gonna have to buy like five hundred bucks worth of cleaning stuff.”

“But we brought all the cleaning stuff from the old place,” Mike says, pointing to the U-Haul.

“Mike.” Jay looks at him, blinking rapidly. “You need to prepare yourself for what you’re about to walk into. Nobody has lived here full time for ten years. My redneck uncles used it as a hunting lodge for a while. It’s gonna be disgusting. We’ll be cleaning nonstop until Christmas.”

“Well, okay, sure.” Mike puts his hands on Jay’s shoulders and steps between him and the house like a shield. “But that’s kind of like a fairy tale, huh? Us and all these little elves scrubbing the house top to bottom until it’s ready for Christmas. Bringing it back to life!”

“Don’t say that,” Jay says, glancing over Mike’s shoulder at the house. “This house coming back to life sounds like a horror movie. To me.”

Mike moans and steps behind Jay, hugging his shoulders, determined to make him feel otherwise. Admittedly, he hasn’t even been inside yet. Shrimp Jay is the first to bolt inside with the key Jay gave him, stud Mike following on his heels. 

“It smells real bad in here!” shrimp Jay announces, sticking his head back outside almost immediately. 

“Open all the windows,” Jay says, his shoulders slumping in the circle of Mike’s arms. “That’s a start. I guess.” 

They spend the whole day doing what they can to make the first floor liveable. Mike volunteers to clean the bathroom nearest to the family room with the big fireplace where they’ll all have to sleep until they can figure out some kind of central heating plan in the future, possibly after a further loan from Jay’s folks. He gags about fifteen times while cleaning the toilet but manages not to puke, which is some kind of victory. That all the plumbing seems to be functioning fine is a miracle in itself, and after he’s spent an hour scrubbing the old claw foot bathtub it actually looks pretty great, like something almost fancy. Antique, he thinks, ready to drop for how tired he is by midday.

The cleaning goes on past sundown but not long after that, with no functioning lights in the house outside of the fireplace, which is so big that it’s a little bit scary, like a flaming mouth. Mike tries not to think of it that way as he feeds more firewood into it. They bought a whole truckload from a farmer down the road before returning the U-Haul. Mike feels so giddy about being able to spend money in large sums again that he’s in a good mood about all of this, even if the ones providing for his clone family are people he’s never met, people Jay kind of acts like he hates. 

Jay goes into town with hot Jay to get pizzas from one of the town’s five restaurants while Mike helps the others set up the bedding situation in the freshly cleaned family room, right up against the fireplace. The room still smells a little weird, but they’ve shut all the windows, and the old-house stink is mostly drowned out by the scent of the burning firewood and the many scented candles that they’ve lined up along the wooden mantle above the fireplace. It starts snowing before the Jays get back with the pizzas, and it’s quickly obvious that even with the fire going all night long they’re all going to have to sleep together under every blanket they own to stay warm at night. 

When the pizzas arrive they eat in front of the fireplace, too, kneeling on the two mattresses that they’ve pushed together and mounded with blankets, everyone wearing hats and coats and huddling close but still shivering.

“We made really good progress today,” Jay announces after he’s had three slices of pizza and two beers, his mood seeming actually good as he reclines against Mike’s chest, wrapped up in his arms. “I’m proud of you guys,” he says. “You really banded together.” 

“What’s going to happen now?” nerd Mike blurts, and Mike wants to snap at him to not ask hard questions yet. “I mean, with our jobs, and-- Just, everything?”

“We’ll probably have to find new jobs,” Jay says. “The commute doesn’t make financial sense for any of us.”

“Hey,” Mike snaps when both nerd Mike and chubby Jay groan. “There’s a movie theater in Orfordville. I think?”

“There’s one in Beloit,” Jay says. “It’s just twenty minutes from here.”

“There you go,” Mike says. “And now you two have experience on your resume.”

“Only a week, in my case,” nerd Mike grumbles. “Jay worked hard to get me that job.” 

“Have some perspective!” Mike says, almost shouting. He can feel Jay holding in a laugh, his shoulders jumping a few times against Mike’s chest. “Think before you speak!”

“Okay, okay!” nerd Mike says, pulling his knees up to his chest. Mike feels bad for him, because he’s probably in a shitty mood because of the lack of meat on his bones. His teeth are chattering. He at least has chubby Jay, who wraps around him and holds him tight, putting his chin on nerd Mike’s shoulder. 

Though they’re all exhausted, and cozy enough with the fire going and everybody clinging to each other under the nearly two foot tall mound of blankets, nobody can sleep. Shrimp Jay is happily occupying the absolute middle spot with stud Mike on one side and hot Jay on the other, chubby Jay and nerd Mike taking the outer spot on hot Jay’s side and Mike’s Jay pressed between the somewhat ideal warmth of Mike and stud Mike. Poor nerd Mike has it worst, on the other end opposite Mike, but he insists on letting chubby Jay huddle between him and hot Jay, giving him the inside spot. Mike is proud of him for being a gentleman about it, like a true Mike. 

“Let’s tell ghost stories,” shrimp Jay says, and there’s general agreement, but then no one can think of any. They could read them from their phones, but that would require uncurling their arms from around whichever Jay or Mike they’re currently clinging to and lifting the blankets enough to see the screens, and their phones are all getting a needful charge from the generator via an 8 port USB hub. 

“We can tell ghost stories on Christmas,” Jay says. “That’s a kind of weird tradition thing, actually. Everybody has two weeks to make one up or find a good one.”

“I’m sure this house will provide ample inspiration,” stud Mike says. 

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Jay mutters. He rolls over in Mike’s arms and squirms inside his coat when Mike unbuttons it for him and pulls Jay in closer to his chest. “Everybody go to sleep,” Jay says. “There’s lots more work to do tomorrow.” 

They quickly learn to stop drinking anything two hours before bedtime, because getting up to take a leak is brutal in the cold that creeps into every inch of the house that isn’t directly in front of the fireplace. Diving back under the blankets and squirming into place against whomever was holding them always feels good, though. The snow falls for a few hours that first night but isn’t too bad in the morning, the car liberated from beneath it in under ten minutes with three of them working at once. They decide to park it in the barn out back, and the rest of their second day goes much like the first one: cleaning, planning, running to Wal-Mart to buy stuff they forgot or didn’t realize they would need. 

By Christmas Eve the place is still spooky and drafty as hell, but Mike also sort of loves it. It smells cleaner, looks cleaner, really is cleaner and also more like a home, with a Christmas tree that they chopped down together as a group decorated in the corner of the family room. It’s got tinsel garlands and not much else, no lights because of the ongoing electricity situation, but it smells amazing, and the fresh pine scent seems to finally chase out the last of the mildew rot smell from the first floor. 

The second floor is another story, and there’s still a lot of work to do. Jay stresses about what his family will do if they show up and see everyone living in the house, but there’s no chance of that until after the New Year, and Mike means it when he tells Jay he thinks it’ll be okay. Mike doesn’t have a Christmas present for Jay, and they all have to huddle around the charged-up laptop to watch shrimp Jay’s present for stud Mike on Christmas morning, because they have no TV, but it’s cozy that way, everyone sort of holding on to each other. It’s such a cute, clueless little movie that Mike almost cries over it, as if shrimp Jay is his to be proud of. No one else really gets a present, except for hot Jay, who stud Mike and shrimp Jay jointly scrub the clawfoot tub out for before filling it with hot water and some cheap but good smelling Wal-Mart bath salts, because apparently he’s long harbored a fantasy about taking a bath alone. They guard the door while he takes his time in there. 

It turns out to be one of the best Christmases Mike has ever had, between the ghost stories that leave them mostly rolling with laughter at each other’s attempts to be scary, the big meal Jay manages to make almost entirely with the kitchen’s old wood burning oven, and the mulled wine that they all drink too much of. Mike falls asleep truly content, wrapped around Jay, and when Jay wakes him up around midnight he sits up on autopilot, ready to put another couple of logs on the fire.

“No, the fire’s fine,” Jay says, whispering. “I want to show you something, um. It’s kind of a Christmas present I want to give you.”

“Aw,” Mike says, feeling bad again for not getting him anything. Next year, when they hopefully won’t have to face some other upheaval right beforehand, he’ll go all the fuck out. He’ll start planning tomorrow. “Where are we going?” he whispers when Jay pulls him out of the blanket mound and tiptoes away from the mattresses, Mike’s hand in his.

“Shh, c’mon. Don’t wake them up. It’s a surprise, just for you.”

They’re already dressed in their coats and hats, and they put their boots on in the foyer, Jay checking the family room for any signs of stirring under the blankets. They’re all conked out after the mulled wine and big dinner, and when Jay leads Mike outside they creep quietly down over the creaky front stairs and into the fresh snow, stepping softly. 

“Wow,” Mike says, because Jay has a big duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and he’s told Mike not to ask what’s in it yet. “This is elaborate, huh?”

“Not at all. We just need some supplies. You’ll see when we get there, it’s not far.”

They go into the woods. Mike’s heart pounds. Jay has always seemed like a kind of magical creature to him, and he’s starting to wonder if he’s about to be introduced to some mystical cave that grants wishes or the fountain of youth. He keeps hold of Jay’s hand and doesn’t ask, just smiles back at him when he turns to flash Mike little grins like he’s excited about this. Whatever it is, giving it to Mike seems to be a kind of gift for Jay himself. Mike has seen him grow happier and lighter on his feet day by day since they came here, even with all the hard work they’ve been doing. Jay would deny it, but he likes hard work, deep down. 

“It’s a hot spring!” Jay says when they arrive at a steaming lagoon not far from the edge of the woods, elevated slightly amid a rock outcropping. “This is like a family secret,” he says, pulling off his knit hat. His hair is crazy underneath it, getting long now, full of static. “There’s towels and robes in the bag, if you want to get in with me.” 

“Like there’s anything I don’t want to get in with you, Jay,” Mike says, already undressing. “I’d get in a fuckin’ dead tauntaun with you, no complaints, and you know it.” 

“There’s this, too,” Jay says, apparently not interested in Mike’s pretty decent Star Wars joke. He unzips the duffel bag and pulls out a bottle of champagne. “Cheap stuff, but. I thought it’d be fun. Something just for us, you know? Now that we don’t even sleep alone anymore.” 

“C’mere you,” Mike says, grabbing him for a kiss. Jay laughs and throws his arms around Mike’s neck to kiss him back, leaning up onto his toes for it. 

“We’ll tell the others eventually,” he says when he pulls free, eyes bright. There’s a big moon out, a mostly clear sky, and this place feels like a good dream already, even before they’ve lowered into the water and cracked the champagne. “But I thought, at first-- It could be just me and you who know about it.”

They’ve only made time for a few quick fucks in the backseat of the car in the past two weeks, too tired from all the work they’ve been doing and too cold inside the confines of the house to find a shady corner to have sex in. Eventually, when they have a contractor come check the integrity of the second floor, and maybe after they’ve fixed the central heat, they’ll have their own bedroom. Mike hasn’t minded the sleepover feeling with everyone piled together in front of the fire, but when he’s finally naked with Jay, up their shoulders in the hot water and grabbing for each other, he moans like a rabid bear for how much he’s missed this feeling of having his Jay all to himself. 

“So, Merry Christmas,” Jay says when he’s straddling Mike’s lap, arms around his neck, both of them hard but not in a hurry to do anything about it yet. They’ll finally be able to take their time. 

“Merry Christmas,” Mike says, his voice a little tight, hands on Jay’s waist under the water. “Farm husband.”

“Jesus, Mike, don’t start crying. And don’t call me that, ever.”

Even after making this demand, Jay kisses Mike so sweetly, like some part of him didn’t really mind. None of them got to pick their nicknames. That’s not how nicknames work. Being called ‘big’ Mike makes him feel fat when the others say it, but when his Jay calls him that, instructing the others on his Mike’s whereabouts or chores or opinions, it always feels like a compliment, like proof that he’s big Mike for this Jay in the sense that he is of course the one Jay loves most, the most important Mike of all. 

They kiss and trade sips from the champagne bottle, rubbing together under the water in a way that feels extremely, appropriately indulgent, and Mike marvels at the fact that he’s here at all, with Jay in his lap and the smell of snow-heavy pine trees around them like a force field. It’s like a holodeck session come to life, but Mike doesn't feel too surprised by the life he's ended up leading, clones and all. He knew as soon as he met Jay that he would be surrounded by magic things as long as he could manage to keep this magic boy by his side.

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some songs for this fic:
> 
> [I Know You Care](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpKBf_twqXM)
> 
> [Army](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9KUdoukjM4)
> 
> Happy holidays to all my RLM friends!!! <3


End file.
